Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent blue, with handles in light blue green; trail in opaque greyish light blue. Broad slightly inward-sloping rim-disk with thick rounded edge and radiating tooling marks on lower surface; tall cylindrical neck, expanding downward; straight-sided fusiform body expanding downward, then tapering in to pointed bottom; two horizontal lug handles applied over trail at top of body, one with a deep horizontal indent in surface; one small marvered blob of translucent blue on side just below point of greatest diameter. Trail applied at bottom, wound upwards in a spiral to carination, tooled into a close-set feather pattern around side, with fourteen alternating upward and downward strokes, then wound again in a spiral up neck and irregularly to top and edge of rim-disk. Intact, but some internal cracks around body; slight dulling, pitting, and patches of creamy weathering and 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