1. Birth of greek art: Historical Background & Painting

Historical sketch

• first greek speaking people (Proto Greek) enter Greece c. 2000 B.C. (end of early Bronze age)

• Minoan civilization (2000 - 1450 BCE)

• Mycenaean empire (1400 - 1200 BCE): mainland greece, cycladic islands, crete, West Asia Minor

  • mycenaeans = homer’s achaeans

  • art influences by Minoans (non-greek speaking people) on Crete so called Aegean art

• “Greek” art begins 1000 B.C after mycenaean civilization

• cause of the destruction of Mycenaean civilization

  • dorian invasions: legendary inhabitants of doris in central mainland greece invaded Peloponnese and occupy Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos

  • Thucydides’ accounts (5 BC): Dorians took over Peloponnese (1103 B.C), 80 years after fall of troy

  • recent thinking puts fall of Homer’s Troy (1250 B.C) and attributes this fall to decay from within and invading “sea-people” (disaffected or disposed Mycenaeans

  • Dorians and other Greek-Speaking people seem to occupy the Peloponnese between 1100- 1000 BC, end of bronze Age and start of Iron Age.

• Period of unrest in Aegean (1150-800 B.C.) marked by migration of 3 major groups of Greek-speaking people: Aeolians, Ionians, Dorians

  • differing in dialect and social customs, but more or less shared a common language and literature, religious beliefs and festivals (still have hostilities)

  • period of unrest called “Dark Ages” or “Geometric period” (geometric patterns in art)

Acropolis of Athens (1600 BC): Mycenaean style palace complex. 

• built on steep, defensible hill

• most prominent Ionian city of Attica

Kerameikos Cemetery & Dipylon Gate

• Kerameikos: named after kerameis (potters that worked there)

• Dipylon Gate: main western entrance to the city

“Toreador Fresco” (Bull-Leaping Scene from Knossos (1500 BC)

• Great Palace of Knossos, Crete

• buon fresco: a painting done rapidly in watercolor on wet plaster on a wall or ceiling, so that the colors penetrate the plaster and become fixed as it dries

• but this one painted on already dry surface (fresco secco), and a binding agent used to fix it to the wall

• traditionally, red:male, white:female, but view has been challenged, colors used as a social marker

• bulls position: “flying gallop”

• profile bodies with frontal eyes: aegean stylistic choice

• bull sacred animal in minoan culture: linked to fertility and power

Characteristics of Minoan Fresco Painting

• liveliness of color

• naturalism & movement

“Flotilla Fresco” from Thera, ca. 1450 BC

• seaside landscape fresco from Cycladic island of Thera

• evidence of minoan political control of influence over thera

chronology

early bronze age: 3000 - 2000

middle bronze age: 2000-1600

late bronze age: 1600-1000

• sub-mycenaean: 1150-1000

geometric: 1000-700

• proto-geometric:1000-900

• mature geometric: 900-700

Mycenaean musician fresco (1300 BC) from Palace at Pylos in Western Peloponnese

• male musician playing seven string lyre (kithara), clothes show elite status

• use minoan fresco technique, but more formal, static mycenaean style

Minoan Octopus Vase From Knossos (1450 BC)

• amphora = wine- storage vessel

• painted in dark slip on a light background: minoan “marine style”

Octopus Chalice from Knossos (1400 B.C.)

• kylix = chalice

• high status ritual object

Mycenaean Larnax (small Sarcophagus) 1300 B.C.

• stone coffin

Mycenaean “Warrior Vase” (krater = bowl for mixing wine and water) from Acropolis of Mycenae (1200 BC) 

• Woman bidding farewell to soldiers

sub-mycenaean amphora from the Kerameikos: pot (1150 - 1000 BC)

• transition from Mycenaean art to early greek geometric design

proto-geometric amphorae from the Kerameikos(1000 BC)

• triglyph and metope frieze: architectural elements of the Doric order)

• tectonic composition: composition which stresses horizontals and verticals

• libation: drink offering

• dentil: tooth-like decorative pattern

lare proto-geometric vase: more black areas on vessel

geometric amphora (900-850 BC)

• amphorae for women’s grave, krater for men

• covered with geometric decoration

• prothesis: laying out the corpse on a bier (funary couch)

• ekphora: transport of the dead to the cemetary

• “horro vacui”: fear of empty space

• had horses (nobility, heroism, social prestige), deer (grace, vitality, renewal), birds (soul’s journey to the afterlife)

Pottery technique

• wheel-made pottery (4000 BC in Near East, 2000 BC in greece)

• clay slip = finely sifted clay mixed with water

• 3 step firing process (responsible for two basic colors on pottery: jet black and golden orange ground)

  • oxidation (air allowed in kiln, clay of vessel and painted on clay slip turn red

  • reduction (air excluded from kiln: clay and clay-slip turn black)

  • re-oxidation (air allowed in kiln again: clay of vessel turns red again, but painted on clay-slip remains black)

    • clay-slip does not turn again because slip is non-pourous and can therefore rise to a high enough temperature so that it partly melts)