Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue with same color handles and base-knob; single trail in opaque white. Horizontal rim-disk with rounded edge; tall cylindrical neck with concave sides; small sloping shoulder; narrow, elongated ovoid body; large coiled base-knob applied to pointed bottom; two vertical strap handles applied to top of body, drawn up and outward, then turned in and down, and attached to top of neck and underside of rim-disk. Trail applied on neck below rim-disk, wound horizontally once around neck and drawn spirally down to body, tooled into a zigzag pattern with close-set vertical indents around top of body, then wound spirally down body in five turns with one more turn further down, and trailed off back across body to bottom of one handle. Body intact, but upper half of one handle missing; dulling, pitting, and faint iridescence.

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