Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque pale turquoise blue. Uneven horizontal rim-disk, with radiating tooling marks on upper surface and rough inner edge to mouth; cylindrical, slanting neck; steeply sloping shoulder; slightly bulbous cylindrical body; convex bottom; on body, two lug handles, applied over trail pattern; one with a tooled indent on top, the other flattened into side. A turquoise blue trail attached at edge of rim-disk, wound round and down in a spiral, forming a band of almost horizontal lines around upper body; a thicker yellow trail added under one handle and wound round middle of body in a spiral over turquoise blue trail; both tooled into an irregular close-set zigzag pattern with upward and downward strokes, forming vertical ribs around body; turquoise trail continueing in a spiral and ending in an almost horizontal line around bottom. Intact; slight dulling and pitting, faint iridescence and small patches of 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