Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent cobalt blue, with one handle in dark almost opaque brownish purple and the other in opaque yellow; trails in opaque yellow and opaque white. Horizontal rim-disk with rounded edge and radiating tooling marks on upper surface; concave cylindrical neck; straight-sided fusiform body with rounded profile expanding downward, then tapering in to pointed bottom with undercurve flattened on one side; two horizontal lug handles applied at top of body over trails, the yellow one higher and more pronounced; small irregular blob of opaque white applied over trails and projecting from side slightly above point of greatest diameter. White trail applied near bottom, wound upwards in a spiral to carination, tooled into a festoon pattern, with ten upward strokes, then wound again in a spiral up neck, ending with a backward loop below rim; yellow trail applied around rim-disk, then drawn down in a spiral around neck, tooled into festoon pattern, continuing in a spiral and ending around bottom in a thick swirl, covering the white trail. Intact, but crack on one side of neck and top of body; some pitting, slight dulling, but very little 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.