Greek Art 1

Mesolithic Period, Neolithic Period, Bronze Age, Cycladic Period, and Minoan Culture

Credit to Gardner’s Art Through The Ages 12th Ed.

Mesolithic Period 8300-7000 BCE

• “Middle Stone Age”• Development of human technology• Earliest evidence of burials found in Franchthi

Cave in the Argolid, Greece

Franchthi Cave in the Argolid, Greece

Franchthi Cave in the Argolid, Greece

Franchthi Cave in the Argolid, Greece

Franchthi Cave in the Argolid, Greece

Neolithic Period 7000-3000 BCE

• Evidence of food producing economy• Simple hut construction• Seafaring in mainland Greece and the Aegean

Greece: Mainland

Greece: Islands

Bronze Age 3000-1100 BCE

• Limited farming and herding • Great fishers, sculptors• Bronze (duh) • Legends: Heracles, Oedipus (1600 BCE)• Cycladic Period 3200-2000 BCE• An early Bronze Age culture of the Cyclades Islands in the Aegean

Sea

– Abundant marble from Aegean Island quarries• Especially Naxos and Paros• These quarries later supplied the master sculptors of Classical

Greece and later Rome

Cyclades Islands

Mainland Greece

Paros

Naxos

Souvlaki in Paros (Paros)

Leaves as big as my face! (Paros)

120 Degree Heat Wave (Paros)

Super Steep (Paros)

Bagels, aka Pita (Paros)

Island View (Paros)

Bronze Age 3000-1100 BCE Cycladic Period 3200-2000 BCE

Mostly Sculpture

Archeologists believe these were primarily funerary offerings meant to be placed on their backs in graves

Very abstract

Large simple triangles dominate form(the head and the torso)

Very broad shoulders

Tiny feet(too tiny to support the figurine standing up)

Bronze Age 3000-1100 BCE • Early Minoan Period (3rd millennium BCE):

– Both on the Islands and Greek mainland– Small settlements– Rarely saw costly offerings buried with the dead

• Middle Minoan Period (2nd millennium BCE):– Crete– LARGE PALACES!– Old Palace Period ended in 1700 BCE (probably from an earthquake)

• Late Minoan Period– New Palace Period– Golden Age of Crete– When the first great Western civilization emerged (I guess Egypt must

be considered Eastern?)

Minoan Culture

Crete

Mainland Greece

Middle Minoan Period Pottery vs. Late Minoan Period Pottery: Both show a love of Nature

Middle Minoan:1800-1700 BCEKamares Ware (found in Kamares cave on Mount Ida from Phaistos (Crete), h. 1’8” in.Light images on dark background

Late Minoan:1500 BCEMarine Style Octopus Jar fromPalaikastro (Crete), h. 11 in. Dark images on light background

The Golden Age of Crete (Late Minoan Period)

• Palaces:– Administrative, commercial, and religious centers of Minoan life– Courtyards for ceremonies, pageants, and games– Storerooms, offices, shrines

• Principal Palaces:– Knossos– Phaistos– Mallia– Kato– Zakro– Khania

Palace at Knossos (Crete)

• Knossos: the largest palace– Legendary home to King Minos– Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur

• Battled and defeated the minotaur, found his way out of the maze helped by Ariadne (King Minos’s daughter)

• Ariadne gave him a thread to mark his path so he could find his way out of the labyrinth

– The Minotaur’s Labyrinth• Labrys= “double ax,” Labyrinth= “House of the Double

Axes”• Refers to sacrificial slaughter

Palace at Knossos (Crete)

• Knossos– All Minoan palaces were constructed of rough,

unshaped fieldstones embedded in clay– Knossos: Several stories high• Interior staircases built around light and air wells for

illumination and ventilation

– Knossos in particular had a very efficient system for drainage of rainwater• Terracotta pipes under the building

Palace at Knossos (Reconstruction)

Palace at Knossos Aerial View

Palace at Knossos Detail

Palace at Knossos Plan

Palace at Knossos

• Paintings (Frescoes)-used true wet-fresco method– All over the walls in this palace– Depict Minoan culture:

• Bull-leaping– Minoan ceremony? Metaphor?

• Processions• Ceremonies

– Depict nature• Birds• Animals• Flowers• Marine Life

Minoan Painting

• Minoan Painting– Lines are more curved than other ancient paintings

(such as Egypt), perhaps suggesting the elasticity of life and movement

– Figures are long and elegant– Confident stance – Pinched waists– Highly animated (look like they’re moving)– Profile pose with full-view eye (similar to Ancient

Egyptian and Mesopotamian Art)

Bull-Leaping, from the Palace at Knossos (Crete), Greece, ca. 1450-1400 BCE, 2’8” high

Controversy over whether this was a true athletic sport or a metaphor for something elseSimilar to modern sport in France and Northern Spain: Course Landaise

Unlike bull-fighting, in this sport, the bull is not harmedAthletes often compete in groups, as seen hereThe leaper is usually male, as seen here (dark skin= male, light skin = female, typical in most ancient paintings, including ancient Egypt)

Minoan Painting

• Ruins of Minoan paintings that once decorated a palace in Egypt were discovered in the 1980s

• Authentic– Painted by Minoans evidenced by style and technique– Why would Egyptians employ Greek painters? We

don’t know (could be a result of Thera volcanic eruption…see next slide)

– International exchange between several ancient civilizations makes it difficult to study any one of them in isolation

Eruption of Volcano in Thera (modern Santorini) 1628 BCE

• During the zenith (peak) of Aegean civiliation, a volcano erupted in the Cycladic Islands burying a palace in Akrotiri under pumice and ash (kind of like the Pompeii of Greece)

• Force was so powerful that sea currents carried the pumice and ash not only to nearby Cycladic Islands and Cyprus, but also as far away as Anatolia, Egypt, Syria, and Israel

Path of Debris from Thera Volcanic Explosion

Explosion in Cylades Islands

Sent debris to:

Anatolia (Turkey)

Cyprus

Crete

Syria

Israel

Egypt

Akrotiri Palace in the Cyclades Islands

• Volcanic ash preserved what are believed to be Minoan frescoes in this Cycladic area at the Akrotiri palace– Suggesting Minoan culture wasn’t limited to Crete

• Used geological info. to pinpoint the date of the eruption (1628 BCE)• The Thera eruption is believed to be the catalyst behind these

findings: • Analyzed tree rings for evidence of slowed growth• Analyzed ice cores in Greenland for peak acidity layers

• This is huge because it makes these frescoes pre-date those at Knossos, when they were previously thought to have been created afterward

Preserved Fresco from Akrotiri (Thera)

Preserved Fresco from Akrotiri (Thera)Minoan Style

(Knossos example)

Minoan Decline

• Scholars believe that Mycenaeans had already moved onto Crete and established themselves at Knossos at the end of the New Palace Period

• Mycenaeans ruled Crete for at least 50 years, perhaps longer

• The importance of the palace at Knossos as a cultural center faded around 1400 BCE, as the focus of the Aegean civilization started to move up toward the Greek mainland

• The palace at Knossos was finally destroyed around 1200 BCE