Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent cobalt blue, with handles and base-knob in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque white. Broad horizontal rim-disk with rounded edge; cylindrical neck, expanding slightly downwards; sloping shoulder; elongated ovoid body, tapering sharply downwards; applied small circular base-knob with uneven edge and tooling indent on flat bottom; two slender strap handles applied to shoulder and drawn up, turned in, and pressed on to neck. One yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another applied to top of body and wound horizontally and then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern, formed by uneven shallow vertical tooling indents around middle of body, where a second trail in white is added, mingling with the yellow trail; a third yellow trail wound in a spiral 3 1/2 times horizontally around lower part of body; another yellow trail wound unevenly around base-knob. Broken and cracked, with one hole in neck and another small hole in body; most of one handle and central part of the other missing; dulling, pitting and patches of faint 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.