Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow, opaque white, and opaque turquoise blue. Broad slightly uneven rim-disk, with a few radiating tooling marks on upper surface; cylindrical neck, expanding downwards; narrow shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body, with slight upward taper; convex bottom; on upper body, two small vertical ring handles, unpierced, with short pointed trails, applied over trail pattern; on one side, irregular projections at top and bottom of bottom. A yellow trail attached at lower edge of rim-disk; on body, alternating bands of yellow, white, and opaque turquoise blue, tooled from top of body to undercurve at bottom into a regular feather pattern in six vertical panels with alternating upward and downward strokes. Broken and repaired around middle of body, with one small hole and several chips, and another oval hole at bottom of body below projection; large white inclusion in rim-disk; slight dulling and pitting, and faint iridescent weathering. Among the more striking examples of glass perfume vessels of the fourth century B.C. are tall, large-bodied alabastra in dark grounds with applied threads combed into zigzag, feather, or festoon patterns over the body.
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.