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Royal Museums Turin verified

Turin, Piedmont, Italy open Visit museumarrow_right_alt

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Bust of Minerva
fullscreen
Bust - manly portrait
fullscreen
Euthymides - Psykter di Euthymides
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Plate decorated with ribbons and nets
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Canteen bowl
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Ingot Blade Kit
fullscreen
Landscape relief known as of Polyphemus and Galatea
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Colombine ointment
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Signpost
fullscreen
Fibulae with disc bracket
Bust of Minerva
Bust - manly portrait
Euthymides - Psykter di Euthymides
Plate decorated with ribbons and nets
Canteen bowl
Ingot Blade Kit
Landscape relief known as of Polyphemus and Galatea
Colombine ointment
Signpost
Fibulae with disc bracket

Other works on display

Description

The dove-shaped thin glass ointment is a container for perfumes, ointments and balms. In order to consume the contents it was necessary to break the tail: this specimen is the only one still sealed that is known, and it is half filled with a clear liquid, with a slight pink sediment deposited on the bottom. These refined containers, often in bright colors, were made with the free blowing technique, which allowed them to be modeled in the shape of a dove; after the insertion of the ointment they were sealed. The origin of free blowing has been identified in the Syrian area around the middle of the 1st century BC: from here it spreads rapidly throughout the Roman world, where it allows the affirmation of glass containers for various uses in daily life already starting from the very early imperial age. Attested above all in northern Italy and very frequent in Piedmontese burial contexts, the colombina ointment is present with few specimens in the other regions of the Empire, so much so that its production area was identified in the western Cisalpina, during the first century AD. , in particular in the active furnaces along the Ticino river basin and the Verbano lake. Similar ointments are often found, even in several examples, in the grave goods of women's tombs, together with others of a spherical shape, also typical of Piedmont.

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