+One quick version of the Minoan chronology, Early, Middle and Late periods 3500–2900 BCThis chronology of Minoan Crete is the one used by Andonis Vasilakis in his book on Minoan Crete, published by Adam Editions in 2000, but other chronologies will vary, sometimes quite considerably (EM periods especially). Sets of different dates from other authors are set out at Minoan chronology EMI Prepalatial 2900–2300 BC EMII 2300–2100 BC EMIII 2100–1900 BC MMIA 1900–1800 BC MMIB Protopalatial(Old Palace Period) 1800–1750 BC MMIIA 1750–1700 BC MMIIB Neopalatial(New Palace Period) 1700–1650 BC MMIIIA 1650–1600 BC MMIIIB 1600–1500 BC LMIA 1500–1450 BC LMIB Postpalatial (at Knossos; Final Palace Period) 1450–1400 BC LMII 1400–1350 BC LMIIIA 1350–1100 BC LMIIIB Minoan art is the art produced by the Bronze Age Aegean Minoan civilization from about 3000 to 1100 BC, though the most extensive and finest survivals come from approximately 2300 to 1400 BC. It forms part of the wider grouping of Aegean art, and in later periods came for a time to have a dominant influence over Cycladic art. Since wood and textiles have decomposed, the best-preserved (and most instructive) surviving examples of Minoan art are its pottery, palace architecture (with frescos which include "the earliest pure landscapes anywhere"),Honour & Fleming, 53 small sculptures in various materials, jewellery, metal vessels, and intricately-carved seals.
It was influenced by the neighbouring cultures of Ancient Egypt and the ancient Near East, which had produced sophisticated urban art for much longer, but the character of the small but wealthy mercantile Minoan cities was very different, with little evidence of large temple-based religion, monarchs, or warfare, and "all the imaginative power and childlike freshness of a very young culture".Castleden, 4 All these aspects of the Minoan culture remain rather mysterious. Sinclair Hood described an "essential quality of the finest Minoan art, the ability to create an atmosphere of movement and life although following a set of highly formal conventions".Hood, 56
The largest and best collection of Minoan art is in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum ("AMH") near Knossos, on the northern coast of Crete. Minoan art and other remnants of material culture, especially the sequence of ceramic styles, have been used by archaeologists to define the three main phases of Minoan culture (EM, MM, LM), and their many sub-phases. The dates to be attached to these remain much discussed, although within narrowing ranges.Hood, 18
The relationship of Minoan art to that of other contemporary cultures and later Ancient Greek art has been much discussed. It clearly dominated Mycenaean art and Cycladic art of the same periods,Hood, 17–18, 23–24 even after Crete was occupied by the Mycenaeans, but only some aspects of the tradition survived the Greek Dark Ages after the collapse of Mycenaean Greece.Hood, 240–241
Subjects and style Minoan art has a variety of subject-matter, much of it appearing across different media, although only some styles of pottery include figurative scenes. Bull-leaping appears in painting and several types of sculpture, and is thought to have had a religious significance; bulls' heads are also a popular subject in terracotta and other sculptural materials. There are no figures that appear to be portraits of individuals, or are clearly royal,Shaw, 73. Possible exceptions include the staff-holding figure on the stone "Chieftain Cup", the Prince of the Lilies, and a figure in a chariot overlooking a crowd in a fresco. and the identities of religious figures is often tentative,Gates, 33–34, 41 with scholars uncertain whether they are deities, clergy or devotees.eg Hood, 53, 55, 58, 110, and Chapin, 58 note 76; Burkert, Walter (1985), Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 23, Harvard University Press, . online at archive.org. Equally, whether painted rooms were "shrines" or secular is far from clear; one room in Akrotiri has been argued to be a bedroom, with remains of a bed, or a shrine.Chapin, 49–51
Animals, including an unusual variety of marine fauna, are often depicted; the "Marine Style" is a type of painted palace pottery from MM III and LM IA that paints sea creatures including octopus spreading all over the vessel, and probably originated from similar frescoed scenes;Hood, 37–38 sometimes these appear in other media. Scenes of hunting and warfare, and horses and riders, are mostly found in later periods, in works perhaps made by Cretans for a Mycenaean market, or Mycenaean overlords of Crete.
While Minoan figures, whether human or animal, have a great sense of life and movement, they are often not very accurate, and the species is sometimes impossible to identify; by comparison with Ancient Egyptian art they are often more vivid, but less naturalistic.Hood, 56, 233–235 However. it has been argued that the hybrid forms of flowering plants in frescos "reinforces the unearthly, magical, quality of the composition", as does the depiction together of flowers that actually appear at very different seasons.Chapin, 54-58, 58 quoted
In comparison with the art of other ancient cultures there is a high proportion of female figures, Chapter 10 though the idea that Minoans had only goddesses and no gods is now discounted. Most human figures are in profile or in a version of the Egyptian convention with the head and legs in profile, and the torso seen frontally; but the Minoan figures exaggerate features such as slim male waists and large female breasts.Hood, 235–236
What is called landscape painting is found in both frescos and on painted pots, and sometimes in other media, but most of the time this consists of plants shown fringing a scene, or dotted around within it. There is a particular visual convention where the surroundings of the main subject are laid out as though seen from above, though individual specimens are shown in profile. This accounts for the rocks being shown all round a scene, with flowers apparently growing down from the top.Hood, 49–50, 235–236; Chapin, 47 and throughout The seascapes surrounding some scenes of fish and of boats, and in the Ship Procession miniature fresco from Akrotiri, land with a settlement as well, give a wider landscape than is usual, and a more conventional arrangement of the view.Hood, 63–64
Painting
Several frescoes have been found, on Crete normally in partial fragments which require a good deal of reconstruction; sometimes only 5% of a reconstructed section is original. Surviving figurative examples date from MM III onwards, the same technique having been used earlier for plain colours and simple patterns. They were probably inspired by Syrian or Egyptian examples, the former perhaps more likely.Hood, 48-49 The most important sites are Knossos and on Santorini, and they were found both in the large "palaces" of the cities (but not all of them) and in "villas" and larger city houses.Gates, 28–29
The frescos include many depictions of people, with the sexes distinguished by a "violent contrast" of colour that is more extreme than the equivalent in Egypt; the men's skin is reddish-brown, and the women's white.Hood, 235 quoted; Probably the most famous fresco is the bull-leaping fresco.. Some figures remain ambiguous, and it has been argued that male youths could also be shown as white-bodied. Other well-known sections are the female fragment known as La Parisienne (from the "Camp Stool Fresco"),Hood, 68 and the Prince of the Lilies (mostly restored), both from Knossos, and the Akrotiri Boxer Fresco, but there are many others, both from Crete itself and related Aegean sites.
Arthur Evans, the first archaeologist to excavate Minoan Knossos, hired the Swiss artist Emile Gilliéron and his son, Émile, as the chief fresco restorers at Knossos. The restorations have been often criticised subsequently;Shaw, 65–68 and throughout; Beard, 17-21; German, Senta, "Conservation vs. restoration: the Palace at Knossos (Crete)", Khan Academy and are now viewed with a "healthy skepticism" as "overconfident" by specialists.Shaw, 65 In one important case a figure of a monkey was turned into a boy;Hood, 48–49; Beard, 20 in fact human figures do not usually appear in "landscape" fresco scenes.Chapin, 47, 54
Spyridon Marinatos excavated the ancient site at Akrotiri, then capital of Santorini, which included the Wall Paintings of Thera, frescoes which make it the second-most famous Minoan site. Although the paintings are rather less refined, and its political relationship with Crete is uncertain, the town was covered in volcanic ash in the Minoan eruption around 1600 BC, and many of them have survived far more completely than those from Crete. Unusually, they include life-size female figures, one apparently a priestess.Hood, 54–56, 238; Gates, 30 (in 2004) summarizes the recent specialist dates for the eruption as in the range 1628-1520. The early part of that range seems to have been gaining ground since then.
Evans and other early archaeologists tended to regard the wall paintings as a natural way to decorate palatial rooms, as they were in the Italian Renaissance,Chapin, 48; Gates, 34 but more recent scholars link them, or many of them, to Minoan religion, about which much remains obscure.Chapin, 47–49; Hood, 47–49; Gates, 33–34 One widely held view is that "Aegean landscape consistently reflects a reverence for nature that implies the overarching presence of a Minoan goddess of nature".Chapin, 54, summarizing Sara Immerwahl
Most of the Minoan population probably rarely saw frescos, which were almost all in interior spaces in buildings controlled by the elite. When they did get access, the "visual evidence of the elite class's communication with divinity", expressed even in "landscape" subjects, may have had a "powerful psychological impact".Chapin, 59-61, 61 quoted Many centuries later, Homer's Odysseus speaks of "Knossos, where Minos reigned ... he that held converse with great Zeus".Odyessey, Book XIX, 172-9 Frescos first appear in the "Neopalatial Period", in MM IIIA, at the same time as the peak sanctuaries seem to have become less used;Gates, 33, 40–41 the Knossos "Saffron Gatherer" (illustrated below) may be the earliest fresco to leave significant remains.Hood, 48; Gates, 27
With a very few hints of modelling, the frescos normally use "flat" colour—pure colours with no shading, blending or attempt to represent form within coloured areas. Many wall paintings formed friezes set at eye level and some 70–80 cm high above a dado, with several painted parallel stripes above and below the images to frame them. The dados were normally also painted plaster, sometimes imitating natural stone patterns, but in grand buildings might be stone or gypsum slabs.Hood, 85 When they were first discovered it was claimed that, in contrast to Egyptian frescos, Crete had "true" frescos, applied to wet plaster. This was subsequently disputed, and much discussed, and it may be that, as much later in Italy, both buon fresco and fresco secco, applied to wet and dry plaster respectively, were used at times.Hood, 83, 47
In general, and with some possible exceptions, wall painters seem to have been a distinct group, and probably the most valued artists. But they were probably in close touch with pottery painters and gem carvers, and influence probably passed in both directions at times.Hood, 47 Ornament also used in pottery can sometimes help to date paintings, which is otherwise only possible by style, which can be difficult.Hood, 47–48 The main colours used in Minoan frescos include black (shale), white (slaked lime), red (hematite), yellow (ochre), blue (Hood, 54–56, 238copper silicate) and green (yellow and blue mixed together).Hood, 84