Glass two-handled bottle (amphora)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue; handles in same color, but one streaked with opaque white; splashed decoration in opaque white and opaque pale yellow. Everted rim, folded over and in; concave cylindrical neck; steeply sloping shoulder; side of body tapering downwards; concave bottom; two rod handles applied as large pads on shoulder over splashed decoration, drawn up, out and round in a curve, and pressed onto side of neck below rim. Decoration applied before inflation causing splashes to expand and become elongated on neck. Intact; few bubbles; pitting of splashed decoration on exterior, some weathering on interior. The decoration was created by applying small fragments of differently colored glass to the surface of the vessel before it was fully blown. Such glassware was very fashionable in the middle decades of the 1st century A.D. and may have been influenced by the production of cast mosaic glass.

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