Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with same color pad-base and colorless handles; trails in opaque yellow and opaque white. Broad, irregular, and slightly inward-sloping rim-disk, with jagged vertical lip to mouth; cylindrical neck, expanding downward; broad sloping shoulder; straight-sided ovoid body; broad circular pad-base, flattened but uneven on underside and with round edge; two vertical s-shaped handles applied on shoulder, trailed up along lower part of neck, and pressed on to underside of rim and top neck; one large translucent blue blob flattened into side just above pad-base. A yellow trail and a white trail attached at edge of rim-disk, wound down spirally and tooled into a festoon pattern on neck and shoulder, but on body tooled into an irregular festoon pattern, with twelve alternating upward and downward strokes, the yellow trail ending on lower body but the white trail continuing to pad-base. Body complete, but parts of rim-disk and both handles missing; patches of limy encrustation with 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