Glass lentoid aryballos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Semi-opaque cobalt blue, with same color handles and cord; trails and blobs in opaque white. Broad slightly uneven and slanting rim-disk; cylindrical neck; sloping shoulder; globular lentoid body; convex bottom; two vertical ring handles attached to shoulder. A trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another wound twice horizontally around neck; a circular marvered blob applied to both faces of body; a large cord, twisted together with a white trail, attached under handles runs down sides and across bottom. Body complete, but part of rim missing and restored with fill; many tiny white inclusions in blue glass; some encrustation and weathering especially around handles and cord. This bottle belongs to a small group of core-formed glass that may have been made in southern Italy, Sicily, or even Carthage. It has also been suggested that these bottles may have been worn as amuletic pendants around the neck.

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