Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in opaque turquoise blue; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Broad horizontal rim-disk, with radiating tooling marks on upper surface; short cylindrical neck; rounded shoulder; elongated ovoid body, tapering upward to pointed bottom, with maximum diameter below the middle; convex bottom; two vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration. Turquoise blue trail attached at edge of rim-disk; a yellow trail wound horizontally around top of body; a band comprising a yellow and a turquoise blue trail wound horizontally around body underneath handles, and a second band comprising two yellow trails flanking a turquoise blue trail wound horizontally around body at point of greatest diameter. Intact, except for most of one handle; slight dulling and pitting, and faint iridescence.

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