Glass flask

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Colorless with blue green tinge; handles, trails, and knob base in deep translucent blue green. Rounded, slightly inverted rim; cup-shaped mouth; tall, cylindrical neck with horizontal tooled indent around base; conical shoulder; tall, slender piriform body; applied solid coiled base; two rod handles applied to shoulder with horizontal tooling indent across pads, drawn upwards, turned in and down, pressed on to lower neck and trailed off above. One trail applied to top of neck and wound twice round in a spiral up underside of mouth; a second, thicker trail applied horizontally to neck under tops of handles; on lower half of shoulder and most of body a continuous band of closely-spaced shallow molded ribs that spiral down from left to right; eleven vertical tooled ribs in deep relief extend from edge of shoulder to two-thirds of way down body. Intact, except for part of lower trail around neck; many pinprick bubbles; deep pitting, thick creamy weathering, and brilliant iridescence covering most of exterior.

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