This lecture is split into two main sections: Minoan and Mycenaean art. The main questions for this lecture are:. In an hour and fifteen minutes, these questions can be investigated through many objects and architectural structures, including:.
As an optional segue from Prehistoric art, you could start by talking about Cycladic art, which has little relation stylistically to later Aegean art, but demonstrates the importance of marble as a material for art and architecture in the region. The Minoan civilization c. Returning to the Octopus Flask from your first activity, you might ask your class to ruminate on how these aspects of their society are reflected in their art.
How can we tell, without written documents, that the sea was important to them? What can the intended use of this object as a flask for holding olive oil or wine tell us about how the society functioned economically? This is a great point at which to discuss the medium of fresco , which students will see again in later units. Another Minoan mystery is bull-leaping, an activity depicted in several Minoan frescoes here, the so-called Bull-Leaping Fresco and sculptures where young men and women appear to perform acrobatic feats with these animals.
This activity may have had a religious meaning, though the exact significance remains unclear. This is a great point in the lecture to emphasize the value of deciphering iconography : could we find out what this image actually depicted?
Was it a real ceremony? If so, does it depict three people, or is there a narrative arc in the image depicting one person acting over time i. Is it a symbolic allusion to heavenly constellations Orion and Taurus , as certain scholars have suggested? Something else? How can we know? However, because Linear A has yet to be deciphered, much about the Minoan civilization including what these people actually called themselves, and the intended meaning of the bull-leaping frescoes and other works of art remains unknown.
What we can see in the bull-leaping frescoes, as well as in other works from Knossos and from neighboring Akrotiri, are clear artistic conventions that read as a distinct style. These conventions include the depiction of figures in profile , differing skin tones used to depict men reddish-brown and women white , strong linearity , and a sense of movement and dynamism. Their language was a very early form of Greek, making them the closest forerunners to the classical Greek civilization that your students will learn about in a later unit.
Mycenean script Linear B has been identified as an early form of Ancient Greek. Something of the Minoan freshness is missing from paintings which decorated the palaces of the Mycenean rulers, whose different interests were illustrated in rather rigid and formal hunting expeditions and chariot processions. Plastic art was essentially limited to relief sculpture rather than statues , and is exemplified by the Lion Gate c. Much of the Cretan artist's ability later served Mycenean patrons: the Vaphio cups, embossed with scenes showing the capture of wild bulls, were found in one of the Shaft Graves at Mycenae.
Such objects as the gold so-called " Mask of Agamemnon ", also from a Shaft Grave, show the stiffer and more reserved Mycenean taste.
Other cups and bronze daggers were inlaid with gold, silver and niello, and the Myceneans appear to have discovered the art of enamelling metal with coloured glass.
There was a long tradition, learned originally from Egypt, of carving cups and bowls from marble and other coloured stones. The interior was hollowed out with a tubular drill fed with sand and water, and the finishing was by laborious grinding with sand or emery.
See also: Greek Metalwork. Like Cretan pottery, Mycenean ceramic art was also decorated with sea creatures as well as delicate flowers and grasses, though typically without the Minoan liveliness and elegance. The Myceneans also favoured pictorial scenes of riders in chariots and hunting, and later on, birds and animals drawn in outline, the bodies filled in with fine patterns possibly inspired by embroidery or weaving.
These appeared on bowls, jars, drinking goblets and flasks with a double handle on top in the form of a stirrup. Aegean cultures were largely sea-faring, and these sea-faring peoples had a different outlook from their land-based neighbours. Man as a voyager has to act as an individual, not as an anonymous member of a highly organised rigid society.
He needs a different sense of time and scale from that of the cultivator and herdsman tied to his land. This sense of independence and self-confidence was to have profound influence on the mainland-based Greeks - the successors of Aegean culture, who occupied the Peleponnese and the islands. They took over, too, the seafarers view of man and society, which had a major effect on their attitude and which led in turn to their achievements in art, science and philosophy, which had such a profound impact on Renaissance art and later movements.
More Resources on the Arts of Antiquity. All rights reserved. Aegean Art c. What is Aegean Art? Cycladic Culture The earliest example of Aegean art appeared in the Cyclades, a group of islands that includes Naxos, Paros, Milos, Santorini and others. Minoan Culture Minoan art , centred on the island of Crete, lasted from about to BCE, when it was destroyed by earthquake and invasion.
Minoan Palace Architecture The first palace at Knossos was destroyed by earthquake in about BCE, together with other smaller palaces. Minoan Painting and Sculpture The walls of the Cretan palaces were colourfully adorned with fresco painting. Minoan Jewellery and Decoration The Minoans excelled in goldsmithing and the intricate art of jewellery.
Minoan Pottery Much of the elegance of Cretan civilisation can be seen in the painted decoration and shapes of its ancient pottery , noted for a variety of bold designs and all-over decoration. Mycenean Architecture Mycenean architecture, for instance, was designed to be impregnable: cities were protected by thick walls of massive irregular blocks of stone, which still survive impressively at Tiryns, and at Mycenae.
Mycenean Painting and Sculpture Something of the Minoan freshness is missing from paintings which decorated the palaces of the Mycenean rulers, whose different interests were illustrated in rather rigid and formal hunting expeditions and chariot processions.
Mycenean Metalwork Much of the Cretan artist's ability later served Mycenean patrons: the Vaphio cups, embossed with scenes showing the capture of wild bulls, were found in one of the Shaft Graves at Mycenae. The ancient Greeks called them kyklades , imagining them as a circle kyklos around the sacred island of Delos, the site of the holiest sanctuary to Apollo. Many of the Cycladic Islands are particularly rich in mineral resources—iron ores, copper, lead ores, gold, silver, emery, obsidian, and marble, the marbles of Paros and Naxos among the finest in the world.
Archaeological evidence points to sporadic Neolithic settlements on Antiparos, Melos, Mykonos, Naxos, and other Cycladic Islands at least as early as the sixth millennium B. These earliest settlers probably cultivated barley and wheat, and most likely fished the Aegean for tunny and other fish. They were also accomplished sculptors in stone, as attested by significant finds of marble figurines on Saliagos near Paros and Antiparos.
In the third millennium B. At this time in the Early Bronze Age, metallurgy developed at a fast pace in the Mediterranean. It was especially fortuitous for the Early Cycladic culture that their islands were rich in iron ores and copper, and that they offered a favorable route across the Aegean. Inhabitants turned to fishing, shipbuilding, and exporting of their mineral resources, as trade flourished between the Cyclades, Minoan Crete , Helladic Greece, and the coast of Asia Minor.
These names correspond to significant burial sites. Unfortunately, few settlements from the Early Cycladic period have been found, and much of the evidence for the culture comes from assemblages of objects, mostly marble vessels and figurines, that the islanders buried with their dead. Varying qualities and quantities of grave goods point to disparities in wealth, suggesting that some form of social ranking was emerging in the Cyclades at this time. The majority of Cycladic marble vessels and sculptures were produced during the Grotta-Pelos and Keros-Syros periods.
Early Cycladic sculpture comprises predominantly female figures that range from simple modification of the stone to developed representations of the human form, some with natural proportions and some more idealized Many of these figures, especially those of the Spedos type, display a remarkable consistency in form and proportion that suggests they were planned with a compass.
Scientific analysis has shown that the surface of the marble was painted with mineral-based pigments—azurite for blue and iron ores, or cinnabar for red. The vessels from this period—bowls Department of Greek and Roman Art.
Barber, R. The Cyclades in the Bronze Age. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, Getz-Gentle, Pat. Early Cycladic Sculpture: An Introduction.
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