Chapter 4: Art of the Aegean Periods of Art Location Architecture: Date Cycladic Cycladic Islands various burial mounds c. 2500BCE Minoan Island of Crete Palace of Knossos c. 1500 BCE Mycenaean mainland Greece Citadel at Mycenae c. 1200 BCE
CYCLADIC ART
4-2: Figurine of a woman, c. 2600-2300 BCE, marble, 1 6 CYCLADIC ART Most what survives from Cycladic culture has been found in grave sites on the Greek islands. Figurines as small as two inches, were placed near the dead. Women always carved standing nude, men are playing harps, both have back-tilted heads, rendered in simple geometric shapes, look very modern, small traces of paint have been found on them Female: very thin hands, feet too small to support sculpture, meant to be placed on their straight backs, lying down, next to the decease, Wedge shaped pelvis and body, emphasized the breasts and public area, archaeologists speculate where this is to represent a dead person, fertility figure, or a goddesses Male: simple geometric shapes, head tilted back, not playing the harp so much as holding it, he might be playing to the deceased in the afterlife although we unsure of their meaning Cue Card Male
CYCLADIC ART Cue Card Male Female 4-2: Figurine of a woman c. 2600-2300 BCE, marble, 1 6 4-3: Male harp player c. 2600-2300 BCE marble, 9
Cue Card MINOAN ART 4-4 to 4-7: Palace at Knossos c. 1700-1400 BCE Crete The home of King Minos, large rambling structure built against the upper slopes and across a the top of a low hill All around were mansions and villas of Minoan elite
Cue Card 4-4to47: 4-7: Palace at Knossos c. 1700-1400 BCE Crete
Compare to Doric column 4-6: Stairwell of Palace at Knossos The central feature of the palace was it great rectangular court. areas for official business, storing food, workrooms, and a theater like area possible forerunner to the later Greek theater, it was complex with three stories high, This was a place for official business, manufacturing, religion, trade, politics interior light and air wells the staircases, had an advanced drainage of rainwater, remarkably efficient system of terracotta (baked clay) pipes under the building The painted wooden columns have distinctive capitals and shafts, taper from a wide top to a narrower base, the opposite of both Egyptian and later Greek columns :
Frescos - close relationship with their natural environment, many flowers, The many flowers, fish, and animals in Minoan paintings reveal a people who delighted in observing and recording the beauty of nature, didn t paint soldiers or battles Queens megaron Reconstructed drawing of Knossos throne room Buon (Wet) Fresco
Cue Card Stylized shapes 4-8: Bull-leaping Fresco c. 1400-1370 BCE, 2 8 Possibly a ritual (very difficult acrobatic maneuver) showing two women (fair skin) and a man (dark skin)(ancient convention) jumping over a bull, woman on left grabs the horns, the man is jumping over the bull, the woman on the right has landed, As in Egyptian Art, males have darker skin than females, figures have extremely thin waists, stand in profile but otherwise reflect an Egyptian figure style, figures have a floating quality with no ground line, sweeping curved lines, S-shaped curves of bull s underside and tail, in contrast to Egyptian wall paintings, the curving lines employed suggest the elasticity of living and moving beings.
4-9: Landscape with swallows (Spring Fresco) c. 1650-1625 1625 BCE, Fresco Cue Card This is the largest and most complete pure landscape Discovered in volumes of volcanic ash that was as much as 5 yards deep, they believe that this eruption could have been the demise of the civilization, painted in wet fresco, the painter used vivid colors and undulating lines to capture the essence of nature, joyful patters, geometrically simplified swallows fly through the air
Cue Card 4-10: Kamares Ware jar c. 1800-1700 BCE, 1 8 Polychromatic Curvilinear abstract patterns The love of nature is manifested in the painted vases Kamares Ware was named after the cave on the slopes where they were discovered the central motif is a great leaping fish curvilinear abstract patterns including waves and spirals, evoke life in the sea both abstract and natural forms. These are light figures on a dark background
4-11: Marine style octopus jar c. 1450 BCE, 11 Cue Card Tentacles of the octopus reach out over the curing surfaces of the vessel, embracing the piece and emphasizing its volume. Masterful realization of the relationship between the vessel decoration its shape Dark figures on a light vessel
4-12: Snake Goddess, c. 1600 BCE, 1 1 ½ Faience low-fired opaque glasslike silicate Cue Card They believe mortal priestesses rather than a deity, large exposed breast symbol of fertility, snakes in hand-power over animal world, frontality of the figures is reminiscent of Egyptian and Mesopotamian statuary, If this is a goddess, it seems as another example of human beings fashion their gods in their own image., thin waists, wide-eyed d expression cat image on headdress Other Snake Goddesses
One of the most remarkable objects ever found on Crete, hippopotamus-tusk ivory, god serpentine, and rock crystal, rendering minute details of muscles and veins 4-13: Young god(?)
Cue Card 4-14: Harvester Vase 1500-1450 1450 BCE Steatite with gold leaf Finest surviving example of relief sculpture Harvester vase - scenes showing sowing and harvesting repetition in composition bursting with energy, crowd singing and shouting, One of the first instances showing a keen interest in underlying muscular and skeletal structure of the human body, Minoan artist s studied the human anatomy
Cue Card MYCENAEAN ART 4-16:Citadel at Tiryns, Greece
4-16:Citadel at Tiryns, Greece This is a sharp contrast to Cretan palaces clearly reveal their defensive character, 20 feet in thickness, piled the large irregular Cyclopean blocks in horizontal courses and then cantilevered them inward until the two walls met in a pointed arch no mortar was used, the vault is held in place only by the weight of the blocks by the smaller stones used as wedges Corbelled Gallery in walls used cyclopean Masonry (huge, roughly cut stone blocks forming the massive fortification walls) Corbel vault Three methods of spanning a passageway Post and Lintel Corbeled Arch Arch
4-18A: Palace of Nester, Pylos Megaron The large reception hall and throne room in a Mycenaean palace, fronted by an open-two- columned porch This was the main feature of the palace Megaron
Outer gateway- enemies would have had to enter this 20-foot-wide channel and face Mycenaean defenders above them, the gate consists of two great upright monoliths capped with a huge lintel, the masonry formed a corbelled arch, Filing this relieving triangle is a great limestone slab with two lions in high relief facing a central Minoantype column. The whole design matches its triangular shape, harmonizing dignity, strength, and scale, lions heads were turned to face the observer, Narrow, tall passageway leading to gate, built for defensive purposes Corbeled Arch Relieving Triangle Cue Card 4-19: Lion Gate, Mycenae
Cue Card Dromos Tholos Tomb Dromos: a long passageway 4-20 & 4-21: Treasury of Atreus Misnamed in the belief it was a repository for treasures; probably originally a tomb, Elite families buried their dead outside the citadel walls in beehive-shaped tombs covered by enormous earthen mounds, 9 such tombs remain Treasury of fatreus is the best preserved, a long passageway (dromos)leads to a doorway
The burial chamber, or tholos, consists sts of a series es of stone corbelled courses laid on a circular base to forma lofty dome. Mason had to use great precision to make the stones to conform to horizontal and vertical curvature of the wall (precision cutting of stones) This is 43 feet high, this dome at the time was the largest vaulted space without interior supports that had ever been built. Largest interior domed space until the Romans
4-22: Funerary mask 1600-1500 1500 BCE, 1 Repoussé - formed in relief by beating a metal plate from the back, leaving the impression on the face It is one of the first attempts at life-size i sculpture Gold work in repoussé, found in a royal shaft grave, mask placed on the deceased s d face like Egyptian burial practices (like King tut), curlicue ears, eyes rendered as slits, hair detailed with long, thin incised marks, Cue Card
4-26: Warrior Vase (Krater), 1200 BCE, 1 4 Cue Card Krater bowl for mixing wine and water Prominent frieze of soldiers marching off to war, woman bid farewell to the heavily armed warriors, lacks a landscape, all the soldiers repeat the same pattern,
Key Idea The Cycladic civilization of the Greek islands produced stylized statuettes of nude standing females and nude males playing musical instruments The Minoans from the island of Crete built mixed-use palaces with complex ground plans Mycenaean s from mainland Greece were noted for massive citadels marked by cyclopean masonry and corbelled vaulting.
SUMMARY Cycladic: island Cycladic figurines Minoan: island Art: palaces not fortified, nurturing, loved life Vases: invented potter s wheel Wet Fresco Stylistic ti Characteristics: ti movement -use of curved line, nature (organic), polychrome Intent : reflection of life, no concern with afterlife Mycenaean: mainland Greece, warfare At Art: megaron. Beehive tomb 1 st dome and arch (corbelled), relieving triangle Metal workers: gold, mask, sword, cups Intent of Art: protection, utilitarian objects, funerary
Innovations in Architecture Cyclopean masonry minimally cut blocks of stone atop one another to create walls and buildings without using mortar Corbelled arch a type of vaulted space which the blocks of stone are gradually placed closer together as building rises, forming an inverted V-Shaped roof
Innovations in Sculpture They were good at sculpting in repoussé, a technique that involves fitting a sheet of think metal, gold, or bronze, onto a surface. The metal is shaped with small hammers from the backside of the plate. The opposite technique working the metal from the front is called chasing.
Innovations in Painting Egypt used fresco secco (dry fresco), this leads to chipped away surface, Aegean painting used buon fresco (true fresco, wet fresco) which renders a more durable product by freshly applied layer of plaster easily adheres to a coat of paint. This technique required quick brushwork