Glass unguentarium (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque white and opaque yellow. Uneven horizontal rim-disk, with rounded edge; tall cylindrical neck; broad sloping shoulder; ovoid body; applied tall outsplayed foot, with rounded edge and deep tooled indent in center of flat bottom; below shoulder, two flattened loop handles projecting at an upward angle from body, applied over trail pattern. A white trail attached to neck and wound down in a spiral and across shoulder, tooled from top of body in a close-set zigzag pattern with deep vertical ribs, then continuing down in a spiral and ending in two horizontal lines around lower body; a yellow trail applied over white halfway down zigzag pattern and continuing immediately below in four close-set horizontal lines. Complete, except for large chip in rim-disk and projecting loop of one handle; slight dulling and pitting, but very little 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