Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trail in opaque yellow. Thick horizontal rim-disk, unevenly shaped with radiating tooling marks on upper surface; cylindrical neck, tapering slightly downward; small sloping shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body; convex bottom; on upper body, two lug handles, applied over trail pattern; one considerably larger than the other. Trail attached at top of rim-disk, wound spirally round edge, then down across neck, and over body where it is tooled into a close-set feather pattern in five vertical panels of upward and downward strokes, ending around edge of bottom. Intact; some dulling and iridescent brownish weathering on rim, neck, and upper body.

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