Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque white. Horizontal rim-disk, with thick rounded edge; tall cylindrical neck, tapering upwards; rounded shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body, curving in to convex bottom with slightly pointed tip. A trail attached at edge of rim-disk; on body, a single trail wound down in a spiral, forming five horizontal bands, at top and bottom as almost horizontal lines but on most of body tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern with alternating upward and downward strokes forming shallow vertical ribs. Complete but most of trail on rim-disk missing; some dulling, pitting, and faint 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