Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent deep purple, with lighter, reddish streaks; handles in translucent dark blue; trails in opaque white and another in now indeterminate color. Thick, almost horizontal rim-disk; cylindrical neck; straight-sided fusiform body expanding downward, then tapering in to pointed bottom; two horizontal lug handles applied over trail at top of body, one slightly higher than the other. Trails attached at bottom, drawn up in a spiral to point of carination, tooled into a festoon pattern with thirteen upward strokes, wound round again in spiral to top of body, with white trail ending in a backward loop. Broken around top of neck with almost half of rim-disk missing, and one trail completely weathered, leaving only indentation in body; dulling, severe pitting and weathering, 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