Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque streaky red brown, with handles and base-knob in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Outsplayed, inward-sloping rim-disk; cylindrical neck; broad sloping shoulder; ovoid body tapering to a point; circular base-knob with rounded edge and small indent on bottom; two ring handles applied over trail decoration, drawn up from shoulder, turned in, and pressed on to neck. One yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another yellow trail applied to shoulder and wound unevenly round in a spiral and twice around top of body in horizontal lines, then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern, at which point a turquoise blue trail is added, becoming wider towards bottom; below, a third yellow trail wound horizontally around lower part of body. Intact; dulling, slight pitting, faint iridescent weathering, and traces of encrustation around handles. During the fifth century B.C., the colors of Mediterranean Group I vessels expanded from blue or opaque white to include dark green, golden brown, and opaque brick red.

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