Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque white and opaque yellow. Thick slight inward-sloping rim-disk, with radiating tooling marks on upper surface; tall cylindrical neck, slanting to one side; small sloping shoulder; cylindrical body with slightly convex sides; slightly flattened bottom with cross-shaped tooling marks; on upper body, two lug handles, applied over trail pattern, one higher than the other; both have trailed off ends to one side extending towards shoulder. A white trail applied to neck, wound round once horizontally and then down in a spiral to body; a yellow trail attached unevenly around rim-disk, then drawn down in a spiral on neck to body over white trail; both trails tooled into a close-set feather pattern in six vertical panels of upward and downward strokes with vertical projecting loops at shoulder, ending around edge of bottom. Intact but with slight internal cracking on neck; some dulling and pitting, with faint iridescence and minor areas of brownish 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