Glass amphoriskos with band of scrolls

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent purple; handles in same color. Rim folded out, over, and in, then smoothed into flaring mouth; cylindrical neck; ovoid body; cylindrical base, with flat bottom; two rod handles attached in a pad to shoulder, drawn up, turned in, and pressed onto neck. One continuous mold seam around body and across bottom, extending to base of neck and forming raised line across bottom. On body, frieze of twenty-nine downturned rounded tongues in raised outline on upper body and thirty upturned rounded tongues on lower body, joined by a central band of tendril scrolls bordered above and below by a horizontal raised line. Intact, but internal crack in neck under one handle; pinprick and larger bubbles; dulling, slight pitting, iridescence, and small patches of weathering. Violet Sidonian jug with two handles.

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