Glass unguentarium (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue with some brown red streaks; trails in opaque white and opaque pale yellow. Thick, uneven horizontal rim-disk with rounded edge; tall cylindrical neck, expanding downwards; sloping shoulder; ovoid body, tapering downwards to point; tall outsplayed foot, with rounded edge and uneven tooled bottom. A white trail attached at underside of rim-disk, drawn back in opposite direction, wound once round top of neck as a hoizontal line, then spirally over neck and shoulder; a yellow trail attached at edge of mouth and wound round rim-disk, then spirally down neck and shoulder over white trail; both tooled into a narrow zigzag band with close-set vertical indents around top of body, then wound almost horizontally around middle of body, drawn down spirally, and ending in another almost horizontal line on lower body. Intact, except for large vertical crack with chipped edges down side of body; dulling, slight pitting, and patches of 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