Glass unguentarium (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with opaque turquoise blue handles, rim-disk, and pad-base; trails in opaque white and yellow. Turquoise blue trail applied as outsplayed rim-disk around rounded top of neck; tall, slender neck, tapering slightly downward; steeply sloping shoulder; elongated piriform body, tapering downward to applied; small pad-base with uneven flat bottom; two small loop handles applied to edge of shoulder and top of body with everted upward angle. White and yellow trails attached at top of neck and wound down as alternate spiral lines, tooled into a festoon pattern round upper half of body, with twelve upward tooling strokes. Complete except for part of rim-disk and weathered chip in pad-base; one large pitted hole on edge of shoulder; some dulling and pitting, especially of turquoise blue additions, and slight weathering of trail decoration.

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