Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in opaque white; trail in opaque greyish light blue. Inward-sloping rim-disk with thick rounded edge; slender cylindrical neck, slanting to one side and flaring at base; straight-sided fusiform body expanding downward, then tapering in to pointed bottom; two large horizontal lug handles applied over trail at top of body. Trail applied near bottom, wound upwards in a spiral to carination, tooled into a close-set feather pattern around side, arranged in nine panels of alternating upward and downward strokes, then wound again in a spiral up neck and unevenly around rim, and trailed off vertically downwards across neck to top of body. Broken and repaired, with three holes in middle of body; dulling and pitting, with faint iridescent weathering.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art