Glass alabastron (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. Broad rim-disk, made as a spiral coil around top of neck; broad cylindrical neck; rounded shoulder; almost cylindrical body, with slightly convex sides tapering upwards; almost flat bottom, slightly concave at center; on body, two small solid, rounded knob handles, applied over trail pattern. A yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; a yellow and a turquoise trail applied at top of body, wound down to bottom in a spiral of alternating lines, and tooled into a fairly regular close-set zigzag pattern with alternating upward and downward strokes. Intact, except for small chip on underside of rim-disk broken; dulling, pitting, and slight iridescent 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