Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent cobalt blue, with handles and base-knob in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque white. Irregular oval-shaped horizontal rim with tooling marks on top surface; tall conical neck; uneven sloping shoulder; large ovoid body, tapering downwards; applied coil base-knob; strap handles applied in a large pads to shoulder, drawn up and slightly outward, then curving in and pressed on to top of neck under rim. Irregular tooling indents and weathered scars around lower body. White trail applied to middle of neck, drawn across shoulder, then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern around upper half of body, formed by uneven vertical tooling indents, and ending in a horizontal line around center of body; yellow trail applied on rim and wound down neck in spiral over white trail, drawn across shoulder, then mingling with white trail in zigzag pattern, and continuing five times around lower body as a fairly thick horizontal line; an area under one handle where trails have not been tooled but left as parallel horizontal lines. Broken and repaired with one handle reattached and cracks around lower body with one hole in body; dulling, pitting, and iridescent 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.