Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent very dark green (?), appearing opaque black, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow, opaque white, and opaque turquoise blue. Broad horizontal rim-disk, with thick rounded edge; tall cylindrical neck, tapering downwards; rounded uneven shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body, with slight upward taper; uneven convex bottom with tooling marks and smoothed in applied blob of same color glass; below shoulder, two vertical ring handles, one slightly higher than the other, applied over trail pattern. A fine yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; on body, bands of fine trails in yellow, white and turquoise blue, tooled from shoulder to lower body into an irregular zigzag pattern with alternating upward and downward strokes forming vertical ribs, with yellow, thicker trail continuing in a spiral around bottom. Complete but broken and repaired around center of body; many pinprick bubbles; some dulling, pitting, and iridescent weathering. In the late fourth century B.C., perfume containers often are far larger than their predecessors and have strikingly elegant decoration in the form of delicate colored threads combed into a zigzag, feather, or festoon pattern.
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.