Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent pale blue green, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Broad horizontal rim-disk; short cylindrical neck; narrow rounded shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body with upward taper; convex bottom; two large vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration. Yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another yellow trail overlaid with turquoise blue applied under rim-disk, wound down in a spiral, then both tooled into an uneven, close-set zigzag pattern on lower two-thirds of body to bottom, where the trails end in irregular swirls. Complete, except for most of one handle; dulling, pitting, and iridescent creamy 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