Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque white, with handles in same color but base-knob in translucent purple; trails in translucent purple and opaque white. Broad, inward-sloping rim-disk; tall, concave neck; rounded shoulder; elongated ovoid body; large circular base-knob with rounded edge and flat bottom; two vertical strap handles drawn up from shoulder, turned in, and pressed on to top of neck. One fine purple trail attached at edge of rim-disk; a thick layer of purple glass applied to body from shoulder to bottom and an opaque white trail applied over it and tooled into a zigzag pattern with deep vertical tooling indents around upper body; flattened blob of opaque white applied to bottom of knob-base. Complete but broken and repaired on one side of rim-disk with parts of trail missing; dulling, deep pitting, iridescence, and thick creamy 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