Minoan Art

Fresco painting, stone working, and

metallurgy

Minoan Frescoes

Minoan Fresco Painting:

General Characteristics• Specific skin color conventions (male v. female)

• Genre scenes common, specific scenes unlikely

• Realistic nature scenes

• Extremely varied range of colors

• Wide variety of scenes and individual motifsindicate this as a major art form

• Absence of hunting and warfare scenes

• Two registers may be Postpalatial

• Underwater scenes

Minoan Fresco Painting

• Painted Stucco Relief Frescoes

• Frescoes with Human and Animal Representations

– Life-size

– Under Lize-size but not Miniature

– Miniature

• Formal Patterns or Heraldic Animals on a Large

Scale

• Decorated Floors

Painted Stucco Relief Frescoes

From near South Entrance to central

Court at Knossos

From above North Entrance Passage at Knossos

Procession Fresco

from Knossos

Details of the Procession Fresco

Cat stalking birds fresco from Ayia Triadha

Blue monkey frescoes

Houses of the Frescoes, Knossos

Palace at Knossos (Evans reconstruction)

Saffron gather fresco

Fragments of fresco as found by

Evans in 1900

Taureador Fresco From the Court of the Stone Spout at Palace at Knossos

Miniature Frescoes

Both from the “Early Keep” at northwest end of the central court at palace at Knossos

Formal Patterns or Heraldic Animals on a Large Scale

Underwater scenes

Fresco (restored by Evans) in the Queen’s Megaron at the palace at Knossos

Boxer Rhyton (serpentine) from Ayia Triadha

Harvester Vase (steatite), Ayia Triadha

Chieftain Cup (serpentine), Ayia Triadha

Sealstones

Lentoid seal, agate, LM II, Metropolitan Museum, NYC

CMS I no 223: lentoid of red jasper

from Vapheio Tholos (LH IIA); Robed man

holds griffin on leash, on his wrist, a sealstone

CMS I no 145: from Mycenae, Minoan

Female (goddess?) flanked by heraldic

lions

The Chania Master Impression

Gold seal rings

Gold seal ring with depiction of bull-jumping scene from Phourni

Further evidence for bull-leaping sport

Ivory figurine of a bull-leaper

Votive figurine of bull with hanger-ons