Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Broad, inward sloping rim-disk, with radiating tool marks on upper surface and uneven edge around mouth; short cylindrical neck with downward taper; narrow rounded shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body, tapering upwards; convex bottom; two vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration. Turquoise blue trail attached at edge of rim-disk; a yellow trail applied on underside of rim-disk and wound down in a spiral to middle of body, then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern; a turquoise blue trail is added, mingling with yellow; immediately below zigzag, another yellow trail and another turquoise blue trail are wound horizontally once around body. Intact; dulling and milky 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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art