A Possible Influence of Egyptian Art in the Creation of Minoan Wall Painting
The art of the Minoan civilization of Bronze Age Crete (2000-1500 BCE) displays a dearest of animal, sea, and plant life, which was used to decorate frescoes and pottery and besides inspired forms in jewellery, stone vessels, and sculpture. Minoan artists delighted in flowing, naturalistic shapes and designs, and in that location is a vibrancy in Minoan fine art which was not present in the contemporary East. Aside from its aesthetic qualities, Minoan fine art also gives valuable insight into the religious, communal, and funeral practices of one of the earliest cultures of the ancient Mediterranean.
Inspirations
The Minoans, equally a seafaring culture, were in contact with foreign peoples throughout the Aegean, as is evidenced past the Nearly E, Babylonian, and Egyptian influences in their early on fine art simply too in merchandise, notably the exchange of pottery and foodstuffs such as oil and wine in return for precious objects and materials such as copper from Cyprus and ivory from Egypt. Thus Minoan artists were constantly exposed to both new ideas and materials which they could use in their own unique art.
The Minoans, as a seafaring civilization, were in contact with strange peoples throughout the Aegean.
Minoan fine art was not but functional and decorative merely could as well have a political purpose, especially the wall paintings of palaces where rulers were depicted in their religious function, which reinforced their role as the head of the community. It is also important to remember that art objects were largely reserved for the ruling elite, who were in the considerable minority when compared to the rest of the population who were generally farmers. Thus, costly art works became a means to emphasise differences in social and political condition for those fortunate enough to own them.
Minoan Pottery
Minoan pottery went through various stages of evolution, and the beginning were the pre-palatial way known as Vasiliki with surfaces busy in mottled red and black and Barbotine wares with decorative excrescences added to the surface. Next came polychrome Kamares ware. Probably originating from Phaistos and dating from the Old Palace flow (2000 BCE - 1700 BCE), its introduction was contemporary with the inflow of the pottery wheel in Crete. The distinctive elements of Kamares pottery are lively red and white designs on a black groundwork. Geometric forms are common but there are likewise impressionistic fish and polyps as well every bit abstract human figures. Sometimes, shells and flowers were also added to the vessel in relief. Common forms are beaked jugs, cups, pyxides (small boxes), chalices, and pithoi (very large handmade vases, sometimes over 1.seven m loftier and used for food storage).
Minoan Jug in Floral Fashion
The New Palace period (c. 1600 BC to 1450 BCE) saw an development in technique and, with information technology, developments in both course and design, including the production of terra cotta sarcophagi. More slender vases, tapering at the base became common, and new designs appeared such equally the stirrup jar with one existent opening and a second false ane with two handles. Spirals and lines are now restricted to areas around handles and necks with, instead, plants and marine life taking eye stage. The Floral Manner well-nigh commonly depicts slender branches with leaves and papyrus flowers. Perhaps the most celebrated instance of this style is the jug from Phaistos which is entirely covered with grass ornament.
The gimmicky Marine Style, meanwhile, is characterised by detailed, naturalistic depictions of octopuses, argonauts, starfish, triton shells, sponges, coral, rocks and seaweed. Further, the Minoans took full advantage of the fluidity of these sea creatures to fill and surround the curved surfaces of their pottery. Bull'due south heads, double axes, and sacral knots also frequently appeared on pottery, too.
The New Palace Style arrives from 1450 BCE. Perhaps influenced by increasing contact with the Mycenaean culture from the Greek mainland, typical examples are the three-handled amphorae, squat alabastron vessels, goblets and ritual vessels with figure-of-eight handles. Wares are decorated with much more schematic and stylised representations than the previous styles, with new designs not seen before including birds, warriors, and shields.
Minoan Stone Vessels
Likewise terracotta, the Minoans also made vessels from a wide multifariousness of rock types, laboriously etching the material out using chisels, hammers, saws, drills and blades. The vessels were finished past grinding with an abrasive such as sand or emery imported from Naxos in the Cyclades. Most designs were inspired by contemporary pottery shapes and even pottery decoration such as the Marine Way was transferred to stone vessels.
Minoan Rhyton
Popular shapes in rock include the 'bird's nest' lidded bowl which tapered significantly at the base of operations and was probably used to store thick oils and ointments. As artists grew in confidence other, more aggressive and larger, vessels were made such as ritual vases or rhyta which could take many forms and which were ordinarily covered in gold leaf. Mayhap the most famous example is the serpentine balderdash'due south head from the Little Palace at Knossos (c. 1600-1500 BCE) which is at present in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion. With gilded wooden horns, rock crystal optics and a white tridacna shell muzzle the animal is superbly rendered, capturing a life-similar pose that would not be equalled in art until Classical Greek sculpture a millennium later.
An ivory leaping figurine is perhaps the earliest known endeavour in sculpture to capture costless move in space.
Minoan Sculpture
Figure sculpture is a rare notice in the archæology of Crete merely enough small figurines survive to illustrate that Minoan artists were as capable of capturing movement and grace in three dimensions as they were in other fine art forms. Early figurines in clay are less accomplished but show the dress of the fourth dimension with men (coloured cherry-red) wearing belted loin cloths and women (coloured white) in long flowing dresses and open-fronted jackets. There are besides statuary figurines, typically of worshippers but also of animals, especially oxen.
Afterwards works are more than sophisticated and amid the most pregnant is a figurine in ivory of a man leaping in the air (over a bull which is a carve up effigy). The hair would accept been added using bronze wire and the clothes in gold foliage. Dating to 1600-1500 BCE, it is perhaps the earliest known attempt in sculpture to capture free movement in space. Another representative piece is the striking figure of a goddess brandishing a snake in each of her raised hands. Rendered in faience, the figurine dates to around 1600 BCE. Her bare breasts represent her role equally a fertility goddess, and the snakes and cat on her caput are symbols of her dominion over wild nature. Both figures are in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete.
Minoan Snake Goddess, Knossos.
Minoan Frescoes
The Minoans decorated their palaces with truthful fresco painting (buon fresco), that is, the painting of colour pigments on wet lime plaster without a binding agent so that when the paint is absorbed by the plaster information technology is fixed and protected from fading. Fresco secco, which is the awarding of paint, in particular for details, onto a dry plaster was also used throughout the palaces every bit was the use of low relief in the plaster to give a shallow three-dimensional effect. Colours employed were black, red, white, xanthous, blueish, and green. There are no surviving examples of shading effects in Minoan frescoes, although, interestingly, sometimes the colour of the background changes whilst the foreground subjects remain unchanged. Although the Egyptians did not employ true fresco, some of the colour conventions of their architectural painting were adopted past the Minoans. Male peel is usually red, female is white, and for metals: gold is xanthous, silvery is blue, and bronze is ruby.
Frescoes busy the walls (either in their entirety or above windows and doors or beneath the dado), ceilings, wooden beams, and sometimes floors of the palace complexes. They depicted first abstract shapes and geometric designs, and then, later, all mode of subjects ranging in scale from miniature to larger-than-life size. Scenes of rituals, processions, festivals, ceremonies, and bull sports were nigh popular. One time again scenes from nature were common, particularly of lilies, irises, crocuses, roses, and also plants such as ivy and reeds. Indeed, the Minoans were one of the primeval cultures to paint natural landscapes without any humans present in the scene; such was their admiration of nature. Animals, also, were frequently depicted in their natural habitat, for example, monkeys, birds, dolphins, and fish. Although Minoan frescoes were frequently framed with decorative borders of geometric designs the primary fresco itself, on occasion, went beyond conventional boundaries such every bit corners and covered several walls, surrounding the viewer.
Griffin Fresco, Knossos, Crete
Historic examples of Minoan frescoes include two young boxers, young men carrying rhytons in a procession, a group of male and female figures leaping over a bull, a large-scale seated griffin against a bold red background, and dolphins swimming higher up a sea floor of urchins. These can exist seen at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, and in situ (reproductions) at Knossos, Crete.
Minoan Jewellery
Smelting technology in ancient Crete allowed for the refining of precious metals such as aureate, silverish, bronze, and aureate-plated bronze. Semi-precious stones were used such as rock crystal, carnelian, garnet, lapis lazuli, obsidian, and red, green, and yellow jasper. Amethyst was also pop and was imported from Egypt where information technology was no longer fashionable in jewellery, a fact which illustrates the Minoan independence of mind regarding materials and design. Faience, enamel, steatite (soapstone), ivory, crush, glass-paste, and bluish frit or Egyptian blue (a constructed intermediate between faience and glass) were also at the disposal of Minoan jewellers.
Minoan jewellers possessed the total repertoire of metalworking techniques (except enamelling) which transformed precious raw material into a staggering array of objects and designs. The majority of pieces were constructed past hand, but such items equally rings were often made using three-slice moulds and the lost-wax technique. Beads were sometimes made that way, too, allowing a certain mass production of these items.
Golden was the most prized textile and was browbeaten, engraved, embossed, moulded, and punched, sometimes with stamps. Other techniques included dot repoussé, filigree (fine golden wire), inlaying, aureate leaf roofing and finally, granulation, where tiny spheres of gold were attached to the main piece using a mixture of gum and copper salt which, when heated, transformed into pure copper, soldering the ii pieces together.
Minoan Bee Pendant
Jewellery took the course of diadems, necklaces, bracelets, chaplet, pendants, armlets, headbands, clothes ornaments, hair pins and hair ornaments, pectorals, chains, rings, and earrings. Rings deserve special mention as they were not only decorative but likewise used in an administrative capacity equally seals. The majority consisted of a slightly convex oval gold bezel at a right angle to a plain hoop, too of gold. Band bezels were most frequently engraved with detailed miniature scenes representing hunting, fighting, bull-leaping, goddesses, mythological creatures, and flora and fauna. These miniature masterpieces, like frescoes and pottery decoration, illustrate the Minoan fondness for filling the unabridged available surface fifty-fifty if figures had to be distorted in order to exist accommodated. Some other field of the Cretan jeweller and engraver was busy weapons such as sword blades, hilts and pommels engraved with figures.
Two of the finest Minoan jewellery pieces are pendants, one of a pair of bees and the other showing a figure property birds. The old was constitute at Malia and is in the class of 2 bees (possibly likewise wasps or hornets) rendered in great particular and realism, clutching between them a driblet of honey which they are about to eolith into a round, granulated honeycomb. Above the bees is a spherical filigree cage enclosing a solid sphere, and below the pendant hang iii cut-out circular disks decorated with filigree and granulation. The second pendant, commonly known every bit the Master of the Animals pendant, is from Aegina, although research has shown it to exist of Cretan origin and almost probably looted in the Mycenaean menses. The pendant consists of what appears to be a nature god or priest belongings the neck of a water bird or goose in each hand and dressed in typical Minoan costume - chugalug, loincloth, and frontal sheath. Five disks hang from the base of the pendant.
Legacy
Minoan artists greatly influenced the art of other Mediterranean islands, notably Rhodes and the Cyclades, peculiarly Thera. Minoan artists were themselves employed in Arab republic of egypt and the Levant to beautify the palaces of rulers at that place. The Minoans also heavily influenced the art of the subsequent Mycenaean civilisation based on mainland Greece. Mycenaean potters, jewellers, and fresco painters, in particular, copied Minoan techniques, forms, and designs, although they did make their marine life, for example, much more abstract, and their fine art, in general, included many more than martial and hunting themes.
Minoan Gold Ring
Equally for later times in Archaic and Classical Greece, the influence of Minoan and then Mycenaean fine art is hard to trace with physical examples. The later Greeks were certainly enlightened of the heritage of their forefathers in the Aegean; tholos tombs and the citadel of Mycenae were never buried from sight, for example. Depictions of double axes (or 50 abrys) in stone and fresco may have combined to give birth to the legend of Theseus and the labyrinth-domicile Minotaur then pop in classical Greek mythology. The lasting legacy of the Minoans, though, is all-time described hither past the art historian R. Higgins:
Maybe the greatest contribution of the Bronze Age to Classical Greece was something less tangible; but quite possibly inherited: an mental attitude of listen which could infringe the formal and hieratic arts of the E and transform them into something spontaneous and cheerful; a divine discontent which led the Greek ever to develop and improve his inheritance. (Higgins, 190)
This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to bookish standards prior to publication.
Source: https://www.worldhistory.org/Minoan_Art/
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