Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque dark red brown, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Broad slightly uneven horizontal rim-disk; cylindrical neck; rounded shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body with slight upward taper; convex bottom; two vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration. Intermingled yellow and turquoise blue trails attached at edge of rim-disk; a yellow trail applied to bottom of neck and a turquoise blue trail applied to top of body and overlaid on the yellow; both wound in a spiral around top of body, then tooled first into an inverted festoon and lower down into a close-set zigzag pattern; the yellow trail continuing in a spiral around bottom. Broken and repaired, with several holes and chips in body; dulling, pitting, and faint iridescent weathering. During the fifth century B.C., the colors of Mediterranean Group I vessels expanded from blue or opaque white to include dark green, golden brown, and opaque brick red.

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