Glass aryballos (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent dark cobalt blue, with handles in opaque turquoise blue; trails in opaque turquoise blue and opaque yellow. Thick inward-sloping rim-disk; short cylindrical neck; almost horizontal sloping shoulder; sperical body; convex, slightly pointed bottom; two vertical ring handles with knobbed tails extend from shoulder to underside of rim-disk. Turquoise blue trail applied to outer edge of rim-disk; a yellow trail applied to outer edge of shoulder and wound spirally, at first in four horizontal lines, then tooled into a zigzag pattern around central section of body, formed by shallow vertical tooling indents, where a turquoise blue trail is added, mingling with the yellow; below this, a yellow trail and a turquoise blue trail wound once around body. Intact; slight dulling and pitting, and small patches of iridescent milky weathering on rim, neck, and handles. Glass vessels such as these first appeared in the Greek world late in the sixth century B.C. They originally contained perfumes or scented oils used in funerary rites, after which the bottles were left in the grave.
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.