Art History Unit 3

Minoan Culture

• Bronze Age

• 1700-1400 BCE

Minoan Culture: Crete

• main island of this area

• Sir Arthur Evans around 1900 gets disks with unknown writing and rediscovers the culture here

• Goes to excavate and finds entire palace

The Minoans

• Development of monumental administrative centers

  • “Palaces”

  • ceremonial, religious structures

• Part of trade network with Egypt, Cyprus, Levant, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia

• Luxury items among elite: eggshell thin pottery, lively painted rooms, flushing toilets, drainage

3 Types of Writing on Crete

• Linear A

  • Mosty incised on clay - very linear

  • 1st form of writing on island

  • We can’t translate it

  • Likely for economic purposes

• Linear B (Mycenaean)

  • Similar to linear A but dated later

  • Developed from linear A

  • Used to write early forms of Greek

• Hieroglyphic script

  • Cannot read this either

“Palaces” Minoan Culture

• administrative centers

• 1700-1400 BCE

• Knossos is first to be excavated

• 6 throughout the island of Crete

  • Hierarchical?

Name, Date, Location, Period

Reconstruction of the palace complex - Knossos Palace

1700-1400 BCE

Knossos, Crete

The Minoan Culture

Notes on this image

• no walls - on low lying hill - defensive

• surrounded by fertile land

• family of ruler of Knossos lived here along with high up officials

• 2-3 stories tall

• columns painted brightly everywhere

• central court in center

  • no main entrance - defensive

Name, Date, Location, Period

• Bull-leaping Fresco

• 1450-1400 BCE

• Palace at Knossos, Crete

• The Minoan Culture

Notes on this image

• painted while fresco is wet - wall painting

• 2 standing white skin, 1 leaping reddish skin - what does it mean? - gender? - all in same male dresses and hairstyles

• Pastels and earth colors- very abstract border - rocks?

• Humans are stylized and elongated

• VERY tiny waist and big belts

• Composite view

• In North Entrance to court

  • Did the bull leaping happen in the community court?

Knossos Palace Throne Room

• 1st room found and excavated

• Griffins flanking throne for protection?

• Small room

• Bathtub - ‘lustral basin’

  • Shows that ruler also has religious power

  • Likely used for religious reasons

• Columns taper toward bottom

Name, Date, Location, Period

• Snake Goddess

• 1600 BC

• Palace at Knossos, Crete

• The Minoan Culture

Notes on this Image

• Buried religious objects under floor of shrine

• Many statues of women- also lots of cups

• Brandishing snakes - shows divinity

• Snake goddess?

• Very fancy dress with wasp waist

• Breast exposed - normal for all Minoan elite women

• Votive gift? cult statue?

• Goddess or priestess?

  • Mode of Faience - perfected by Egyptians and maybe learned from them

Knossos Palace Magazines

• storage area

• inventory

• collecting and distributing goods

Knossos Palace - Residential Quarters

• Like apartments

• Light goes down to bottom because of rotating stairways around a light well

Features of Minoan Palaces:

Architecture

• Central courtyard

• Throne room

• Lustral basin

• Magazine

• Residential quarters

• Bathrooms, flushable toilets, drainage system

• Shrines

Urbane, sophisticated culture

• fashion, music, peaceful themes, lots of nature, jewelry and gold work, stone vases, trade

Covered with frescoes and decorative architecture

Knossos Palace and others - Functions

• Administrative

  • Seat of Ruler

• Economic: redistributive centers

  • magazines and storage vessels for manufacture and storage

  • Linear A tablets

  • Seals

• Ceremonial/Religious

  • Shrines

  • Sacred votives and objects

  • Lustral basins

  • Iconography

Name, Date, Period

Harvester Vase

1500 BC

The Minoan Culture

Notes on this image

• Rhyton

• Used to pour out religious libations - religious use

• Carved reliefs into stone - likely learned from Egyptians - very difficult

• Depicting harvest festival

  • Carrying wheat

  • Smiling and laughing and singing

    • Holding sistrum - Egyptian instrument

The Mycenaeans

Late Bronze Age

1600-1200 BC

• worship some gods/goddesses

• Mycenaens were bureaucrats

• Very war like with each other and others

Sir Heinrich Schliemann

• Mycenaean culture was forgotten then rediscovered

• Finds world of Troy

  • Goes to Mycenae and finds it

Linear B and Michael Ventris

• Michael Ventris solves Linear B translation

• Proved that Linear B was used to form Greek

• How are they related to Minoans and Greeks?

• Writing accounts/inventories

  • no poems, Homer, etc.

Mycenae

• one of largest citadel- each is independent

• citadels usually on hill + surrounded by fertile plane

• fortified with wall

  • monumental gate

Mycenae “Rich in Gold”: the shaft graves

• 2 grave circles - 1 later incorporated into wall

Name, Date, Period

Mycenae

1400 BC

Mycenaen Period

Name, Date, Age, Location

Grave Circle A with shaft graves

Mycenae

1600-1500 BCE

Mycenaen Period

Notes on this Image

• 1st evidence of Menaens

• Very wealthy - lots of power

• Come from Europe region (Transylvania)

• Powerful families buried here likely royal

  • Had gravestones but no writing

• each shaft held multiple people: men, women, and children

Name, Date, Age, Location

Grave Circle A with Shaft Graves

Mycenae

1600-1500 BCE

Mycenaen Period

Name, Date, Age, Location

Grave Circle A with Shaft Graves

Mycenae

1600-1500 BCE

Mycenaen Period

Grave Circle A: bronze weapons

Mycenae

FILLED with weapons

most ceremonial

Showing military might

Grave Circle A: Gold

• GOLD

  • Sheets wrapped around bodies

Name, Date, Age, Location

• Gold funerary mask

• Grave Circle A, Mycenae

• 1600 BC

• Mycenaen period

Notes on this image

• only men

• “mask of Agamemnon”

  • not actually

• hammer gold over wooden mask of face

• very stylized/idealized

  • hair and beard is unusual for area

Mycenaen: other gold masks and body coverings

• not as regal

• One shaft had 2 children with whole body in gold

  • meant to rule next/princes?

  • elaborate funeral

Name, Date, Age, Location

Inlaid dagger blade with lion hunt

Grave Circle A, Mycenae

1600-1500 BCE

Mycenaen Period

Notes on this image

• embellished, bronze, not actually used as weapon

• 4 men, huge spears and hsields

  • matches with Homer (Ajax)

• Men hunting lions - important symbols - linked to kings

• No lions in Greece - trading, seeing animals in their art

  • Subjects very un-Minoan but Minoan style

Name, date, age, location and Notes on this image

• Citadel Mycenae

• 1400-1200 BCE, Mycenae, Greece

• Mycenaen

• Architecture of intimidation

• Huge gateway and entrance

  • Use Natural landscape

Cyclopean walls

• Mycenae

  • Walls by putting in huge boulders and filling with small stones

Name, Date, Age, Location

• Lion Gate and Bastion

• Mycenae

• 1250 BC

  • Mycenaen Age

Ashlar

Mycenaean

Closer to gate charging HUGE stones into rectangles

Notes on this image

2 lions flanking Minoan column

tapers at base

on top of Minoan style altar

goddesses Minoan often represented

Did they worship same goddess?

For religious protection over gate?

Clear Minoan influence

Heads were bronze and gold - pointed at

Three methods of spanning a passageway:

1. post and lintel

2. corbeled arch

3. arch

Great ramp

visitor ramp up to citadel

Megaron

building

open on one end

front porch and throne room

where king holds audience

Minoan style columns

brightly painted - Minoan style

covered in hunting, warlike scenes

Defensive measures: postern gate and sally port

• Mycenae

• constantly maintaining fortification

• Back gate - much less elaborate than main defensive - secret way out for escape or send out small troops

Defensive measures: secret cistern

• Mycenae

• tunnel outside underground to get underwater source to avoid enemy from seeing

  • withstand siege for longer and avoid water getting poisoned

Mycenaen Citadels Overview

• constructed 1400 BC monumentalized and strengthened until 1200 BC

• Dominated surrounding landscape, concerned with defense and intimidation

• Built with ashlar and cyclopean masonry

• Features: gates, bastions, shrines associated with walls, megafauna, secret cisterns, postern gates, sally ports, production and storage

  • Storage area like Minoans inventory / economic

Mycenae: Tholoi Tombs

• impressed / intimidated visitors

• Reused over generations

Tholos Tomb Nots

• Monumental doorway to massive burial chamber

• Dead laid out surrounded with weapons, gold, etc. (looted)

• seal it, cover with earth

• Reexcavate for next burial

• Side chamber to put older bones

  • Corbal dome distributes weight

• Smoothed

• Drill holes: bronze rosettes?

• Largest enclosed space without supports until Pantheon

Mycenaen Tholos Tombs Overview

• Reused over generations for inhumation burials (likely for families)

• Commonly found along major roads

• Associated with citadels or centers

• The elaborate architecture and wealth of the burials suggests these were used as elite or even royal family burial grounds

The Greek World Dates

700-300 BC

What happened to the Mycenaeans?

• don’t really know

• 12th century collapse

• Art shows different headdresses from different areas

• idea that collapse was bad and refugees go to Egypt but rejected

• craziness of moving and refugees

The “Dark Age” / Geometric period

• citadels all destroyed

• political economy and administrative system collapses

• Linear B and writing disappears

  • limited to bureaucratic system which goes away so writing goes away too

• Trade and International connections drastically reduced

• Massive depopulation and settlement abandonment/destruction

• When they return, few similarities but culture mostly vastly different

• Small villages, simple huts, trading reduced

• No figural art - mostly geometric art

The Archaic Period

• looking up from geometric dark age

• The Greek World

• New influence from Egypt: still pharaohs but not as powerful, Egyptian Pharaoh Psamtik: rein not secure, civil war

• Greeks as mercenaries: paid army showing weakness, also use other people besides Greeks

• Greek mercenaries allowed to settle for trade

• Egyptian art is basically same as before

• Age of Tyrants

  • Great patrons of art

  • Wealth

  • Aritstocrats but stabilized and bring political rest

  • Some make position hereditary and comes to be negative term

• New role of artists: becoming known and name - can rise in status

Name, Date, Age

New York Kouros

600 BCE

Archaic Period

Notes on this image

• Kouros: ancient word for young man

• 1x, 2x, 3x life size - learning directly form Egyptian sculptors

• Egyptian ‘inspiration’:

  • Naturalistic

  • Ka statue - webbing

  • Clothed simple kilts - can still show off body but no clothes = negative

• Greek

  • Single males

  • Similar pose - no emotion

  • Egyptian style wig

  • Completely no clothes - see MALE no clothes as positive

  • idealized version of greek man

  • Aristocrat/elite

  • Gravemarker

  • Very stylized

Name, Date, Age, Location

Kroisos Kouros

Anavysos, Greece

530 BCE

Archaic Period

Notes on this image

• Inscription on Base: stay and mourn at the monument for dead Kroisos, whom violent Ares destroyed, fighting in the front rank

  • He died in battle heroically and honorably - as if statue is talking to you

• More naturalistic

• Same wig- was bright wig

Name, Date, Age, Location

Peplos Kore

Acropolis, Athens, Greece

530 BCE

Archaic Period

Notes on this Image

• clothed - female no clothes in still bad

• peplos - conservative dress

• aristocratic ideal woman

• Kore = young girl

• 
  

Name, Date, Age, Artist

Achilles and Ajax Playing Dice, Attic Black Figure Amphora

530 BCE

Archaic Period

by Exekias

Notes on this image

• Athens is pottery innovator

• Black figure: local red clay and use clip to paint background and figures, incise lines for details and kiln makes slip black

• Heroes from Trojan War: Achilles left Ajax right

• Gambling with dice

• Eyes drawn to table, Achilles won

  • game of chance - Achilles is more luck / has better fate than Ajax

  • True also for their stories - Ajax has bad fate in life murdering his family ; Achilles dies young but at height of career