Glass alabastron

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, appearing black; opaque white trail. Two conjoining fragments of straight-sided fusiform body expanding downward, then tapering in to bottom. Single white trail wound in a spiral around body and tooled into a festoon pattern with sixteen upward strokes, continuing in a plain spiral in two turns around lower part of body; another white trail applied vertically below, drawn up and then round in a downward spiral in five turns ending around bottom. Broken with weathered edges on both fragments, missing rim, neck, bottom, and handles; dulling, pitting, and iridescent weathering. Thin coating a red core material on interior.

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