Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent blue, with same color pad-base and handles; trail in opaque yellow. Slanting rim-disk, sloping inward, with thick rounded outer edge and 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. Yellow trail applied to edge of rim-disk, wound spirally down neck and across shoulder, where it is tooled into a festoon pattern, with nine upward strokes, continuing in almost horizontal lines at top of body but then tooled into a feather pattern in six uneven panels of alternating upward and downward strokes over rest of body to pad-base. Complete except for chip in rim and upper half of one handle; dulling, slight iridescence, and creamy brown weathering, especially on 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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art