Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Inward-sloping rim-disk, with radiating tooling marks on upper surface; cylindrical neck, expanding downwards with fine tooling line around base; sloping shoulder; top-shaped body; two vertical strap handles applied to shoulder, drawn up and in, and pressed onto underside of rim-disk and top of neck. A fine yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another thick yellow trail applied on edge of shoulder, tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern on upper half of body, where a turquoise blue trail is added, mingling with the yellow, forming vertical ridges in sides; below, a yellow and a turquoise blue trail wound horizontally around body. Broken with part of lower body and all of base-knob missing, and one small weathered chip in rim-disk; slight pitting and some encrustation around handles. This broken example enables us to see the rough and pitted interior surface of the bottle.

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