Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque dark purple, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Broad slightly uneven horizontal rim-disk; short cylindrical neck; narrow rounded shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body with upward taper; convex bottom; two vertical ring handles with tails, applied over trail decoration. A yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another thicker yellow trail applied to neck; a fine turquoise blue trail also applied at top of body; both wound down in a spiral, tooled into a pattern in part resembling a zigzag, in part a feather, ending with a thick turquoise blue trail around the bottom. Intact; dulling, pitting, and weathering with areas of yellow-brown encrustation.

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