Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent blue, with same color pad-base; handles in translucent greenish yellow; trails in opaque yellow and opaque pale grayish blue. Narrow rim-disk, sloping inward; tall, narrow cylindrical neck, with slightly convex sides; sloping shoulder; elongated fusiform body; uneven circular pad-base, flat at center but with angular upward slanting sides, round edge, and horizontal upper surface; vestiges of two vertical s-shaped handles on underside of rim and down neck, with two large pads on shoulder. Yellow trail applied to edge of rim-disk and another trail in grayish blue applied over the yellow immediately below, both wound spirally down neck and across shoulder, then tooled into a feather pattern from top of body to the point where the body turns inward toward the bottom, in eight panels of alternating upward and downward strokes of unequal length, both trails continuing in spiral around lower body, ending at pad-base. Broken and repaired around neck and base, with part of rim-disk, most of handles, and part of pad-base missing, but most of body undamaged; slight pitting, reddish brown weathering and iridescence, especially on grayish blue trail.
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.