Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque white. Broad rim-disk, uneven and sloping inward with radiating tooling marks on upper and lower surfaces, and jagged, projecting inner lip to neck; cylindrical neck; straight-sided fusiform body expanding downward, then tapering in to pointed bottom; two elongated horizontal lug handles applied at top of body over trails; marvered blob of blue applied over trails on one side at point of greatest diameter. Trails attached near bottom, drawn up in a spiral to point of carination, tooled into a close-set feather pattern around side, arranged in seven panels of alternating upward and downward strokes, some slanting and extending onto neck, forming a partial festoon pattern, wound round again in spiral to top of body and on to edge of rim, with white sometimes overlapping yellow. Intact; some bubbles; very slight dulling, pitting, and iridescent weathering.

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