Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent blue; handles in translucent greenish yellow; trail in opaque white. Uneven, slanting rim-disk, with thick rounded edge and sloping inward; thick cylindrical neck, with tooling indents around top; narrow angular shoulder; elongated ovoid body; pointed bottom; vestiges of two vertical handles applied in pads at different heights on shoulder, trailed up neck, and pressed on to top neck; a marvered blob of translucent greenish yellow glass applied over trail on lower body. Trail applied to rim-disk and wound spirally down, tooled into a feather pattern on body in nine irregular panels of alternating upward and downward strokes, then continuing on lower body in a spiral and ending on pointed bottom. Body complete, but most of handles missing; dulling, pitting, iridescence, and small areas of milky white 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