Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent turquoise 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, curving in at bottom; two large vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration. Yellow and urquoise trails, mixed together, attached at edge of rim-disk; other yellow and turquoise trails applied to top of body under neck and rim-disk; both wound in a spiral around body, at first as horizontal lines, then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern with alternate upward and downward strokes. Broken around lower body, bottom missing, and parts of trails completely weathered, leaving only indentation in body; dulling, pitting, and whitish weathering with slight iridescence.

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