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8/10/2019 The primitive aspects of Minoan artistic convention.
1/8
Sinclair Hood
The primitive aspects of Minoan artistic conventionIn: Bulletin de correspondance hellnique. Supplment 11, 1985. pp. 21-27.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Hood Sinclair. The primitive aspects of Minoan artistic convention. In: Bulletin de correspondance hellnique. Supplment 11,
1985. pp. 21-27.
doi : 10.3406/bch.1985.5264
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/bch_0304-2456_1985_sup_11_1_5264
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/author/auteur_bch_1170http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/bch.1985.5264http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/bch_0304-2456_1985_sup_11_1_5264http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/bch_0304-2456_1985_sup_11_1_5264http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/bch.1985.5264http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/author/auteur_bch_11708/10/2019 The primitive aspects of Minoan artistic convention.
2/8
THE PRIMITIVE
ASPECTS
OF MINOAN ARTISTIC CONVENTION
One clue
to
the
unique
character
of
the Minoan civilisation
of
Bronze
Age
Crte
is
its
conservatism. Many
of
the
traits
peculiar
to
the
Minoan civilisation
appear
to be
survivais
of primitive
features
that had once been
shared with
the inhabitants
of
other parts
of
the Near East but which passed out
of
fashion or were abandoned
there while they
lingered in
Crte.1
One
possible
example of
such a survival
may
be illustrated by the type
of
dress
worn by
Cretan
men in the
earlier
part
of
the
Bronze
Age, as seen
for
instance
on
figurines left by votaries in
peak
sanctuaries like
Petsofas.2
A similar type of dress
appears on
Predynastic
figurines in Egypt,
and the Minoan cod-piece
may
simply
reflect the survival in
Crte
of
a fashion that was once
gnerai throughout
a wide
rgion
of
the
Near
East
including
Egypt
and
adjacent areas such
as
Syria
and
Palestine.3
In the field of
religion
the
vident prdominance
of
a
female deity and the
hints
of
the existence
of matriarchal customs in
social
life may
similarly
reflect
a
state
of
things that
had
prevailed
in
much earlier times throughout the Near East but
continued later
in
Crte.
The unpleasant practices which the
excavations of
John
Sakellarakis and
Peter
Warren
appear to
suggest
human
sacrifice and the slaughter
and
eating
of
children
in
a
ritual
context are
perhaps
other aspects
of
a primeval
tradition that lingered in
Crte
into a mature phase of the
Bronze
Age
there.
The circular
tombs which
flourished
during the early
part
of the
Bronze
Age
in some areas of
Crte
could be another legacy of this spirit of conservatism. This
is
on
the
assumption
that such
tombs are derived
from
primitive circular
houses
of
the
type found in
various
rgions
of
the
Near
East including Palestine and Cyprus,
in the
earliest
times. The
Cretan
circular tombs
of
the
Early Bronze
Age may be
merely houses
of
this primitive type retained
for
the
dead
long
after
the living
had
abandoned them in favour of ones of
more flexible plan with
rectangular rooms.
Following this line
of
thought
I
believe that one
of
the most striking
aspects
of
Minoan art,
and
a key
to
its originality, is the way
in
which
it retained primitive
(1) Cf. S.
Hood, The Minoans
(1971), p. 31.
(2)
E.g.
C.
Zervos,
L'Art
de
la
Crte
(1956),
p.
192f.,
flgs.
232-233.
(3)
As suggested in S.
Hood,
The
Minoans
(1971), p. 31.
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22 Sinclair hood [BCH
Suppl
XI
conventions into an ge
when they
had long been abandoned in other parts of the
civilised
world of
the Near East.4
The
most
dcisive
and important of
thse primitive features which were
retained
by Minoan
artists and by Cycladic and Mycenaean ones
following
in their steps
was
the
liberty
to
dispense
with
a
ground-line
for
figures
of
men
and animais
when
it suited them.
Many
of
the figures in the Thera wall-paintings
of
the
16th
century
B.C.
are represented
'in
the
air'
without their feet resting
on ground-lines.5
The
same is still true in the
case of
the much later
wall-paintings of
the 13th century
B.C.
in the Palace of
Nestor
at
Pylos
on the Greek
mainland.6 Even
when
a
convenient
ground-line was readily available the artist might
choose
to
ignore it.7
The animais
and
other
figures depicted in the great cave-sanctuaries of the
Upper
Palaeolithic in France and Spain were set in a comparable manner without
ground-lines
on
the rocky walls and ceilings.
I
hve
not corne across any examples
of
artificial
ground-lines on
which
figures
stand
in
Palaeolithic cave art, although
it
is
true
that
in
some
instances natural
lines
in
the rock
seem
to
hve
been deliber-
ately
adopted
as ground-lines
for
the figures.8 A lack
of
artificial
ground-lines
is also a feature
of
the
later
rock-shelter
art of Spain and Portugal. It
is interesting
that an absence of ground-lines for the figures similarly appears to
be a
feature of the
art
of atal
Huyuk
assignable
to
the Early Neolithic
of Anatolia.9
In Egyptian
art
from the
time of
the Old Kingdom onwards a ground-line
on which figures could stand was de rigueur.
But
it was not always so in
Egypt.
Ground-lines are
entirely lacking
for
instance
in the paintings which
graced
the
walls
of
Predynastic Tomb 100 at Hierakonpolis.10 Tomb 100 was probably a
royal
sepulchre
in
which one
of
the Predynastic kings
of
this rgion
of
Egypt was buried.11
Ground-lines are still only employed in
a partial
and haphazard manner on the
carved slate
palettes
of
late Predynastic
and
earliest
Dynastie
times.
For example,
there
are no ground-lines for the figures on
the
Two
Gazelles
palette;12
but on that
of
Narmer,
dating
from about the time
of
the beginning
of
the First Dynasty, ground-
lines
are much in vidence.13
Not
many remains
of
large-scale early
painting
hve
survived to
us elsewhere
in
the Near East. But a fragmentary
wall-painting at
Teleilat Ghassul
in
Palestine,
contemporary
perhaps
with
an
early phase
of
the Predynastic period
in Egypt,
shows a ground-line
on
which the feet
of
several figures or
their
footstools are rest-
(4)
Cf.
S.
Hood,
Arts
(1978),
p.
235.
(5)
E.g. the
warriors and animais
above them in the
Miniature
Frieze from the West
House,
Thera VI,
Colour
Plate 7
(right).
(6)
E.g.
M. L. Lang,
PN
II (1969), Nos. 5 H
5,
16 H 43, 21 H 48, 28 H 64, 12 C
43.
(7)
E.g.
Thera
IV, Colour
Plate D.
(8)
Several
examples in Lascaux, e.g. the 'Unicorn'
and
'Chinese' horse (F.
Windels,
The Lascaux Cave
Paintings [1949],
p.
52f.).
(9)
J.
Mellaart, atal Huyuk (1967),
passim.
(10) J. E.
Quibell
and F.
W.
Green, Hierakonpolis Part II (1902), p. 20-22,
pi.
LXXV-LXXVIII.
For the date of the
tomb,
see H.
Case
and J.
C.
Payne, Journal of Egyplian
Archaeology
48 (1962), p. 5-18;
J. C. Payne, ibid. 49 (1973), p. 31-35. I
am grateful
to Dr. Alessandra Nibbi for thse rfrences.
(1 1) See Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology
48 (1962), p. 17f.; ibid. 59 (1973), p. 34.
(12) W . M . F. Ptrie, Crmonial Slale Palettes (1953),
pi.
E.
(13) Ibid.,
pi.
J
and
K.
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1985]
PRIMITIVE MINOAN
ARTISTIC
CONVENTION 23
ing.14 A smaller
figure, however,
to
their left is depicted
as
if floating
in
the air
above the ground-line; and in gnerai what has
survived of
wall dcoration from
Teleilat
Ghassul appears to
hve
been slapped on to
a background
in
the
casual and
unorganised
fashion characteristic
of
the earlier
paintings of atal
Hiiyuk
and
the
Iberian
rock-shelters.
The
wall-paintings of Tel
Uqair
in
Mesopotamia are considerably
later than
those
of Teleilat Ghassul and are assigned
to
the Uruk period.15 There is some
use
of
ground-lines
in them; but the lopard which flanks the
altar
stairs is resting in the
air, as are the figures in the
Warka
stle which dates from
this
or from the
succeeding
Jemdet Nasr period.16 The
Warka
stle is as
innocent
of ground-lines as are
many
of
the roughly contemporary
slate relief palettes of
Egypt.
Ground-lines
were
evidently standard,
however,
in
Mesopotamia by the
time
of
the Stle
of
the
Vultures
(stle
of Ur
Nammu)
dating
from the
time of
the First
Dynasty of Ur.17
The ground-line hre
is
partly composed
of the bodies of
fallen
enemies
on
top
of
which
the men
of
Ur are trampling
their
way
to
victory.
Compare
the rather
later
stle
of
Naram Sin
of
the Dynasty
of Akkad.18 Ground-lines appear
to
be prsent
everywhere
in the wall-paintings at
Mari assigned
to
the time of
Hammurabi or not much earlier.19
A second
primitive
feature
of
Minoan art, which is
to
some extent connected
with this liberty
to dispense
with ground-lines, is freedom from the
necessity of
a rigid
or formai scheme
of
composition.
Cretan
artists, and Mycenaean
ones after
them,
were quite capable
of devising
formai compositions, or
ones of
a heraldic
nature
with symmetrically arranged pairs
of
animais, when
it suited
them. But, like
the
Mesolithic
artists and those
of atal
Hiiyuk
after
them, they felt
able to
dispense
with
anything of
the kind when they wished. Scnes
in
their
paintings
were normally
unrestrained
by
vertical boundary
lines,
and
might
go round
the corners
of
rooms,
as in the case of the Thera
Monkey
Fresco.20 Vertical
borders
for scnes in paintings,
as
found
on
the Knossos Taureador Fresco, were exceptional.21
A
third
primitive
feature of Minoan art, which is also connected
with
the
liberty
to
dispense
with ground-lines,
is the convention of the
Flying
Gallop for
running
animais together with the
related
convention
of
the Knielauf run
for
human
figures.
A version
of
the Flying Gallop for
animais
is found as early as the
Upper
Palaeolithic,
although it
does
not
appear
to
be common then;22 but in a developed
form
it is
characte
ristic
f
the later rock-shelter
art of
Iberia. The Knielauf pose
for
running human
figures is attested at atal Hyuk.23 The
earliest
vidence
for
the Knielauf pose
(14) A. Mallon, R. Keppel, R. Neuville,
Teileill
Ghassul
I
(1934), p. 130f., pi.
66.
(15)
S.
Lloyd
and
F. Safar, Journal of
Near Eastern
Studies 2 (1943), p. 131-158, pi.
X-XII.
(16)
Ibid.,
pi.
X,
bottom.
A. Moortgat,
The Art
of Ancient Mesopotamia (1969),
pi.
14.
(17)
Ibid., pi.
118-121, esp. pi.
119.
(18)
Ibid.,
pi.
155-156.
(19) A. Parrot, Mari II, Le
Palais
2, Peintures murales (1958), passim.
(20) Thera
V, pi.
D.
(21) PM
III,
p.
213,
fig. 144.
(22) E.g. the
wild
boar from
Altamira,
reproduced in A. Leroi-Gourhan, The
Art of Prehistoric
Man
(1968), pi. 117.
(23)
J.
Mellaart,
atal Hyk
(1967),
Colour
Plate
XIII.
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24 SINCLAIR HOOD [BCH
Suppl
XI
so
far
in
Crte
dates from Late Minoan 1 in the early
15th century
B.C. when
goat-headed monsters on seal impressions
from
Zakro are
seen running
in
this
manner.24 The Flying Gallop, however,
is found in
Crte
as early as the time of the
Phaistos deposit of seal impressions
assignable
to
Middle Minoan II c. 1700 B.C.
or earlier.25
Neither
the Flying Gallop nor the
Knielauf convention for
running can
easily
be combined with the use
of
ground-lines. The Egyptians in fact in Dynastie
times showed people running by setting their legs wide apart with both feet firmly
planted
on
the ground.26 The
Flying
Gallop only became popular
in
Egyptian
art
at
a
relatively late
period,
and then no
doubt
under
influence from the Aegean;27
the New Kingdom convention
for showing
a
chariot
horse with forelegs
raised and
hind legs
on the ground may
be
an adaptation of the
Flying
Gallop.28
We
now come to some
other primitive features
of
Minoan
art
which are
not
obviously
connected
with
freedom
from
the limitations imposed by the
use
of a
ground-line
like
those
so
far
considered.
One
of
thse
is the reprsentation
of
human figures in wall-paintings without
outlines round them. In Egyptian painting of the
Dynastie
period human figures
seem to
be
invariably
depicted with
visible outlines in
a diffrent
shade
of
colour,
although at times such outlines
may
be very
discrte
and difficult
to detect
in repro
ductions. In Mesopotamian
painting to
judge from
what survives
at
Mari, datable
c.
1800
B.C.
or not much earlier, the
outlines
round
figures are
aggressively prominent,
as
they
tend to be on the
more or less
contemporary paintings on the walls of
Middle
Kingdom tombs at
Bni
Hasan
in Egypt.
In the Aegean by contrast
even life-size
or nearly life-size figures are often depicted without
any
outlines
at ail.29 Human
figures in
Iberian rock-shelters
and in the Early Neolithic seulement of atal Hiiyuk
were similarly
painted
without
outlines.
A fifth primitive feature of
Minoan
and later egean painting related
to
this
last is the rendering
of
the human
figure as
an uniform flat surface without any
attempt
to
show contours or muscles by
lines
or shading. An apparently unique
exception once
again is
provided
by the Knossos
Taureador
Fresco where some
of
the
figures
hve
internai markings.30 The lack
of
internai markings is
in
fact a
convention
which
also
seems
to
hve
been retained in
Egyptian
painting as
far
as
the human figure was
concerned.
But the Egyptian
artist
could depict an animal
like the favourite
dog
in the
Tomb
of
Nebamun
at
Thebes dated
c. 1475 B.C.
with
an array
of
carefully drawn
internai lines
showing joints and muscles.31 In
Mesopotamia,
to
judge
from
Mari, internai markings
of
a
highly
stylised kind were
normal.
(24)
JHS 22 (1902), p. 80, flg.
12, No. 34.
(25)
AnnScAtene 35-36
(N. S.
19-20)
(1957-58),
p.
116,
flg.
298,
Tipo 233.
(26) H. Schfer,
Principles of Egyptian
Art
(translated
and edited by
John Baines) (1974), p. 16, pi.
30.
l27) W. Stevenson Smith, Interconnections
in the Ancient
Near East
(1965), p. 26, 77,
155.
(28)
Ibid.,
p.
27.
(29)
E.g. the
Thera Boxers and Fishermen, Thera
IV, Colour
Plate E; Thera
VI, Colour
Plate 6.
(30)
E.g. PM
III,
Colour
Plate XXI opposite p. 216.
(31) Nina
M. Davies,
Ancient Egyptian
Paintings
I (1936),
pi.
XV.
(32) E.g.
A.
Parrot,
Mari
II,
Le
Palais
2,
Peintures
murales
(1958),
flgs.
25, 26,
72-74, 77; pi.
VI,
XVII,
XXIII;
Colour PI.
D, E.
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PRIMITIVE MINOAN ARTISTIC CONVENTION 25
A
sixth feature which
may reflect
the continuance
of
a
primitive
tradition
in
Minoan art and the subsquent
art of
the
egean
area is the use
of
white paint
for
the flesh of women contrasting
with a
deep
red
for that of men.
The
Ayia Triadha
sarcophagus
illustrtes this convention
well;
it is datable c.
1400
B.C.
or
later, after
the
Mycenaean conquest
of
Crte,
but
the
convention
is
attested
earlier there
and
elsewhere in the Aegean. There is some vidence that the
same
convention of using
white
to
indicate
the flesh
of women
was followed at atal Huyuk, although James
Mellaart notes
that women
were
also upon occasion painted red there and suggests
the
possibility
that white paint was
intended to
represent clothing rather than skin
colour.33 At
least one figure, however, which appears
to
be
female
on
a wall
at
atal
Hiiyuk is entirely white.34 Men
at atal
Huyuk are regularly painted
brown as later in Crte.35
In
the
world of
the mature Bronze
Age in
the Near East this use
of
white paint
for
the flesh
of
women seems
to
be
something
peculiar
to
Crte
in
the first instance
and
eventually
to
the
egean
area
as a
whole.
The
Egyptians
also
distinguished
the skin colour
of
men from
that
of women,
but only by making slight diffrences
in the shades of brown used for them. Moreover Egyptian
artists were
by
no
means
always consistent, and upon
occasion
rendered
men
in light brown and women in
dark brown. In
Mesopotamia,
to
judge from the paintings
at
Mari, the same dark
brown colour was used both for
the
flesh
of women
and goddesses and for that
of
gods and
men.
Thus
in
the
painting in
the
Audience
Chamber at Mari
the
goddess
Ishtar and the
company
of
gods and goddesses
round her
ail
hve
flesh painted the
same dark brown
colour.36
A seventh
and
last feature
of
Minoan art which may
be
a survival from much
earlier times is the use
of
plaster
relief combined
with
painting.
Painted reliefs
of
clay
or
plaster
abound
at
atal
Hiiyuk;
37
but
as
far
as
1
hve
been
able
to
discover
they
hve
not yet come
to
light in
Egypt
or Mesopotamia, although stone reliefs
occur in both
rgions from Predynastic times
onwards.
Fritz
Schachermeyr in particular has emphasised that
Minoan
art shows
a
distinct
affnity with
that of
arly
Neolithic atal Huyuk and
with
that of the
more
remote Mesolithic as known
to
us from
the paintings in
Iberian
rock-shelters. But
he
has
felt a
diffculty
about seeing a direct connection in view
of
the very considrable
gap
in time and in the absence of any
obvious
intermediary links between
the
Mesolithic
and
earliest
Neolithic
of the
Mediterranean area
on
the one hand
and
the
mature
Bronze
Age
of
Crte
on the
other.38
It
is
now
clear,
however,
from
discoveries
at
Phaistos
that plaster
on
Cretan
walls
and floors
was being
decorated
with
designs in
paint
before
the
end of
the
(33)
J.
Mellaart, atal Hyk (1967), p.
150f.
(34)
Ibid., pi. 53.
(35)
Ibid.,
p.
150.
(36) A. Parrot,
Mari
II, Le
Palais
2,
Peintures
murales (1958),
Colour
Plate
L.
(37)
E.g.
J. Mellaart, atal Hyk (1967),
Colour
Plate VIL
(38) F. Schachermeyr,
Die
Szenenkomposition der
minoischen
Bildkunst und ihre Bedeutung fur
die
Beurteilung
der
altkretischen
Kultur ,
KretChron 15-16
(1961-62)
I,
p.
177-185.
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26
Sinclair hood [BCH
Suppl
XI
Middle Minoan
I
period.39 There
is also one
small fragment
of decorated plaster
which
appears to corne
from a
safe
context
of
the
Final
Neolithic at Phaistos.40
This Final Neolithic fragment has remains of a
gomtrie
design in
red
on a
white
ground, and suggests a comparison with some
of
the dcorative patterns
on
walls
at atal
Huyuk.41
The vidence from Myrtos-Fournou Korif is ambiguous, but it does not absolu
tely
preclude the existence
of
dcorative wall plaster in Early Minoan II
there.
Mark
Cameron notes
that
while only
a red or brownish red paint
is certainly
attested ...
other colours derived
from
earth pigments, possibly including yellow ochres, may
hve been
used occasionally ; and he later
suggests
the possibility that
some
elementary
artistic
ornamentation may
hve
been attempted, by contrasting painted
with
unpainted
areas .42
Painted relief plaster may
hve
existed
at Knossos
by
Middle Minoan II
to judge
from
a fragment
from
the fill of a drain south of the Royal
Road there.43
It is worth bearing in mind in considering such questions how very little is known
as
yet
about
early
wall-paintings
in
Egypt,
Palestine
and
Mesopotamia,
where
the
conditions
for
their survival are infnitely more favourable than they are in
Crte.
It
should also
be
remembered that the early
paintings of Anatolia
were
totally
unknown
before the spectacular
discoveries made
by James Mellaart at
atal
Hiiyuk.
The
vidence
from
Phaistos
suggests that
it
was already the
practice to
decorate
walls
in
Crte with painted
designs before the
end
of
the Neolithic there.
It is indeed
tempting
to
consider whether the custom of painting designs on
walls
might not
hve
been introduced to
Crte by
the
first
Neolithic settlers
back
in the 7th
or 6th
mill-
ennium B.C. In the light
of
the
discoveries
at atal Hiiyiik one may
well ask:
Why
not?
Pourquoi
pas?
Sinclair
Hood.
N. Marinatos demande S. Hood
de
prciser sa dfinition
du
terme
primitif
et
s'interroge sur
la
signification culturelle
des
conventions artistiques.
S. Hood
prcise
que
le
terme
primitif est
utilis dans un
sens surtout
temporel
(==
primeval). Le fait
pour l'art minoen de ne
pas
avoir adopt certaines conventions,
comme la
ligne
de sol,
qui
existait en Egypte, constituait une sorte de recul, mais dont
les
Minoens
ont
su tirer
un
remarquable
parti
artistique.
Ghr.
Doumas
fait
remarquer
que l'absence
de
ligne
de
sol
se retrouve
dans
la
cramique
du
Gycladique
Moyen,
comme dans
le style de
Fikellura Rhodes.
(39)
E.g.
fragments of wall plaster
from
a deposit of
Phase
I in
Vano
LXII, and the decorated floor of
the same date in
room
LIV, Fests I, p. 106f., flg. 142, and p. 85f.,
pi.
LXXXV a).
(40) L.
Vagnetti,
AnnScAlene 50-51 (N. S. 34-35) (1972-73)
[1975],
p. 95 and 117, flg. 133:6.
(41) E.g. J . Mellaart, alal Huyuk (1967), Colour Plate
VII.
(42) M. A.
S.
Cameron, in P. Warren, Myrlos (1972), p. 305-309, esp. p. 306
and
308.
(43) B. Kaiser, Uniersuchungen (1976), p. 286, RR 7 from Royal Road: South, 36, which wae
apparently
a
pure
deposit
of
Middle Minoan
II.
8/10/2019 The primitive aspects of Minoan artistic convention.
8/8
1985]
PRIMITIVE MINOAN ARTISTIC
CONVENTION
27
L. Morgan souligne que
certaines
conventions (absence
de
ligne
de sol,
de
trait
de
contour,
association peinture-relief) peuvent
aider
distinguer
l'art
minoen de
l'art mycnien.
P.
Warren observe
que
de la
communication
de S.
Hood
ressort
l'ide que les Minoens
ont
d reprendre
et
conserver
des lments
antrieurs
appartenant
une
communaut
anatolienne
et
proche-orientale.
Il
se
demande
si
un
tel
lien
avec
les
formes
orientales
a
bien
exist.
S. Hood insiste sur les
relations
qui ont exist,
ds l'poque
nolithique, entre
la Crte
et l'Anatolie, et note par
ailleurs
que
la
tendance maintenir d'anciennes traditions est un
phnomne rpandu dans
l'histoire
des
socits
humaines.
0.
Pelon
observe
que les
jalons
intermdiaires
manquent
entre l'art de atal
Huyiik
et
celui de la
Crte.
D'autre part
les
conventions picturales (couleur
blanche
pour
les femmes,
brune pour
les
hommes) ne sont
pas aussi absolues
atal
Huyiik
qu'en
Crte.
1. Pini prcise qu'une
ligne
de sol est assez souvent
marque
en Crte sur
les
sceaux
partir
du
MM
II,
et
trs
frquente ensuite
sur
le
Continent pour
structurer
la
composition.
Recommended