Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent dark cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque white. Inward-sloping rim-disk; tall, slanting, cylindrical neck; short, rounded shoulder; straight-sided body with upward taper; convex bottom; below shoulder, two vertical ring handles with long knobbed tails, applied over trails. One trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another applied on neck below rim, tooled into a close-set feather pattern from top of shoulder to just above bottom with long vertical tooling indents; below this, trail ends in a spiral twist around bottom. Intact, except for one chip in rim; dulling, deep pitting, and 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