Glass aryballos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with same color handles; trails in opaque turquoise blue and opaque yellow. Broad inward-sloping oval rim-disk with radiating tooling marks on upper surface; cylindrical neck; almost horizontal shoulder; almost spherical body; convex, slightly pointed bottom; two ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration, extend from shoulder to neck . A turquoise blue trail applied to outer edge of rim-disk; a broad yellow trail applied on upper body and wound down in spiral, at first in horizontal lines, then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern around central section of body, formed by uneven vertical tooling indents; a second trail in turquoise blue added to zigzag, mingling with the yellow trail; below, a yellow trail and two turquoise blue trails wound horizontally once round body. Intact; dulling, pitting, and whitish iridescent weathering. Blue pomiform aryballos with green, yellow, and white lines and zigzags.

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