Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Thick horizontal rim-disk, with rough inner edge to mouth; cylindrical, slanting neck; small sloping shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body, with slight upward taper; convex bottom, with small tooled hole to one side; on body, two lug handles, applied over trail pattern; one with a tooled upward horizontal indent, the other with a sideways vertical indent. A fine yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another broader yellow trail applied around top of body and wound round in a spiral; another trail in turquoise added below, and both tooled in six alternating bands into a widely spaced feather pattern with five vertical panels of upward and downward strokes, ending around edge of bottom. Complete, but broken and repaired around middle of body with one small hole; dulling, slight pitting, and iridescent brownish 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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art