Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Semi-translucent olive green, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Broad horizontal rim-disk; cylindrical neck; narrow rounded shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body; convex bottom; two large vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration. A yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another yellow trail applied to top of body together with a turquoise blue trail, overlaid on the yellow; both wound in a spiral around body, tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern with alternate upward and downward strokes, forming vertical ribs on sides; the turquoise blue trail ending in a circle on bottom. Intact; some surface pitting, but very little 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