Greek Painting

Wall Painting in the Minoan Period.

Greek wall painting has its roots in the prehistoric civilization on the island of Crete during what is known as the Minoan Period. The excavations of Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos on Crete at the start of the twentieth century revealed not only a great, sprawling palace, but they also turned up fragments of wall paintings. Reconstructing them was a painstaking process, but the results can be seen in the Heraklion Museum on Crete. The most impressive of the murals that Evans found was one that showed toreadors leaping over the back of a charging bull. Since then, fragments of frescos have been found at other sites on Crete and some of the Cyclades Islands as well. Also in the early 1900s, a house belonging to a Minoan settler was uncovered on the island of Melos, and among the finds was a naturalistic painting of flying fish. In the 1980s, Austrian archaeologists discovered a palatial complex at Tell el-Daba (ancient Avaris in Egypt), which was the capital of the Hyksos who invaded Egypt in the period between the Middle and the New Kingdom and were driven out by the founder of the New Kingdom, the pharaoh Ahmose. In it were fragments of Minoan mural paintings, including one showing bull-leapers against a background that shows a maze. The most startling finds, however, have emerged since 1967 from Akrotiri on the island of Thera, where a Minoan town was buried by the eruption of the Thera volcano that preserved houses to their second and even their third story. The eruption is dated by scientists to 1628 b.c.e., for it must have spewed enough ash and pumice into the atmosphere to block the rays of the sun, producing abnormally low temperatures for a year or two. By examining tree rings for signs of retarded growth and ice cores from Greenland for layers of peak acidity, the date can be pinpointed with a degree of confidence, even though the pottery found at Akrotiri would indicate a date about a generation later. Akrotiri produced the earliest surviving Minoan paintings, as well as those that are best preserved.

Three Classes of Minoan Murals.

Minoan wall paintings—known also as frescoes—fall into three major classes, yet due to their often overlapping styles, it is often difficult to establish any direct line of development between the classes. The first class deals with the world of nature. These frescoes show flowers and other plants, animals, birds, and sea creatures. Human figures are usually not present. The second class shows human figures of both men and women, on a large scale. Female figures seem to predominate, and they are dressed in the fashions of the Knossos court, but it is not always clear whether they are priestesses or ordinary women dressed for a festival. The third group is the miniature frescoes that feature small human figures in a landscape or architectural setting. Assigning dates to these frescoes is not easy, and without dates it is hard to trace any development. Obviously the paintings found at Akrotiri must date before the eruption of the volcano that buried the Minoan town, but elsewhere dates are much less approximate. The famous fresco showing a life-size charging bull and toreadors is part of a stucco relief of charging bulls from the north entrance of the palace at Knossos and is assumed to have been created relatively late in the Minoan period. Yet it is a thoroughly Minoan painting belonging to the second class, even if it belongs to the years shortly before the palace was taken over by Greek-speaking invaders from the Greek mainland.

The Paintings from Akrotiri.

The finds at Akrotiri have added immensely to modern knowledge of Minoan painting. Not only are the paintings well preserved, but they are securely dated before the eruption of the Thera volcano, during the New Palace period on Crete. There are examples of all three classes of painting. The world of nature is represented by a mural in a house labelled the "House of the Ladies" which shows papyrus plants. Since papyrus does not grow on Thera or Crete, the presence of the plant in Minoan art indicates Egyptian influence. A fresco from a shrine portraying a garden with stylized rocks and naturalistic lilies is another example. The second class is represented by a mural of two boys boxing, and another of a naked fisherman holding his catch of fish in both his hands. The Miniature Style is represented by a remarkable fresco of a ship from the so-called "West House" at Akrotiri. It is a frieze about 43 centimeters (seventeen inches) high running around the top of at least three walls of a room. It shows a flotilla of ships being paddled between two ports. It seems to be an example of narrative art, perhaps of a naval campaign, but it is impossible to know for sure.

Mycenaean Painting.

On mainland Greece the Mycenaean civilization, a Greek-speaking peoples, flourished between 1600 and 1200 b.c.e. Mycenaean wall painting is a continuation of Minoan painting, but it is not easy to attach dates to the surviving evidence. Recent excavations at Thebes in central Greece, the city of the legendary King Oedipus, have revealed remains of two successive palaces, and in the earlier of the two, archaeologists found fragments of a fresco showing a procession of women dated to the fourteenth century b.c.e. At Mycenae, houses outside the citadel walls yielded fragments of frescoes that might be dated equally early. But nothing on the mainland is as early as the frescoes found on the island of Thera. Most of what has been found dates to the last century of the Mycenaean civilization.

Favorite Subjects.

A procession of women, life-sized and wearing the typical Minoan dress consisting of a tight bodice, bare breasts, and flounced skirt, is one of the most common themes of Mycenaean murals. Each woman bears an offering, and they move from left to right, making their way probably towards a goddess. There are also battle scenes; at Pylos there were enigmatic battle scenes showing duels between Mycenaeans equipped with short swords, daggers, and helmets made from the tusks of boars, and adversaries wearing animal skins knotted over the shoulder. A painted mural at Mycenae showing scenes of battle ran around the four walls of the main room of the Mycenaean palace, the "megaron," with a hearth in the middle. There were also hunting scenes, including one of a boar hunt from the palace at Tiryns, where the boar is portrayed running in a flying gallop, pursued by hunting dogs that leap on his back. A shield fresco showing figure-eight shields was found at Tiryns, better preserved than the similar figure-eight shield fresco found at Knossos by Sir Arthur Evans. On the whole, the subjects of the paintings seem to reflect a more martial society than on Crete; hunt-scenes and battle-scenes were apparently more attractive. Other murals do indicate the presence of varied interests, however. The Throne Room in the palace at Pylos had a mural of a black man playing a lyre. From a house at Mycenae built after 1400 b.c.e. outside the citadel, fresco fragments depict toreadors and bulls. This fresco may have been painted by a Minoan artist who had emigrated from Crete to mainland Greece, and it does not prove that bull-leaping was a sport that was popular in the Mycenaean world, though it does indicate some interest in it. When the Mycenaean palaces fell at the start of the Greek Dark Ages in 1100 b.c.e., the art of fresco painting perished with them.

The Revival of Greek Painting.

Painting revived in the early archaic period of Greece, but except for vase painting the evidence is mostly literary. Only one well-preserved example of painting dating earlier than 600 b.c.e. survived: a terracotta plaque from a temple at Thermon in north-west Greece which portrays the hero Perseus fleeing with the head of the Gorgon, Medusa, under his arm. The Etruscan tomb paintings found in Italy seem to have been done by Greeks for Etruscan customers, however; they are therefore the products of Greek journeymen who traveled to Etruria (modern Tuscany north of Rome) to find work as early as the start of the sixth century b.c.e. A painted wooden votive plaque has been discovered in Greece, at Pitsa near Corinth, which dates about 530 b.c.e. It shows a family making sacrifice. A man is apparently pouring wine on the altar, and a boy wearing a garland has brought up a sheep to be sacrificed, while two flautists and a lyre-player supply music and two women look on, holding laurel branches in their hands. It is a colorful composition, rather like the polychrome vases which Corinthian potters were producing at the time. The next evidence dates to about 470 b.c.e.: a painted tomb from Poseidonia, a Greek colony in Italy south of Naples, now known as Paestum. It is a small tomb with paintings of banqueters reclining on couches along the sides of the interior, and on the ceiling a picture of a youth diving from a high scaffolding. The painting was not meant for public viewing and it is impossible to interpret its message. In the history of the visual arts, it is important because Greek painting on media other than pottery is exceedingly rare.

THE "PAINTED STOA" IN ATHENS

introduction:

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

source:

The Great Painters: Polygnotus and Micon.

For the works of the great Greek painters, modern scholarship must rely on descriptions from ancient authors. The painter who introduced portrayals of persons in three-quarters view was Cimon from Cleonae, which is between Corinth and Argos in Greece. Polygnotus of Thasos, who was brought to Athens by the Athenian general and statesman Cimon who dominated Athenian political life in the late 470s and 460s b.c.e., introduced more innovations. He was the first to paint faces with the mouth open, showing the teeth, and the first to paint women with transparent drapery. He lived in the period when painters were discovering the laws of perspective. The tradition is that painted scenery for productions in the theater was invented by the tragic poet Sophocles, but his older rival Aeschylus was the first to have scenery that had perspective, developed by the painter Agatharchus. Other painters of the period were Micon, who collaborated with Polygnotus, and Panainos, the brother of the great sculptor Phidias. There was one monument where all three of them collaborated: the Stoa Poikile (The Painted Colonnade) on the south side of the Athenian marketplace, where the philosopher Zeno, founder of the Stoic School of philosophy, would give his lectures years later. There were four painted panels in the stoa affixed to the back wall. One depicted the Battle of Oenoë between the Athenians and the Spartans that was evidently an important battle although historians are uncertain what it was or why it took place. Another was a painting from mythology showing a battle between the Athenians and the Amazons, warrior women who attacked Athens and were defeated by King Theseus. A third showed a scene from the legendary Trojan War in which the Greek leaders are meeting to decide how to punish Ajax the Less for his rape of the priestess Cassandra. Finally a fourth painting evidently shows a sequence of actions related to the Battle of Marathon where the Athenians defeated the Persians: first the struggle itself, then the flight of the Persians, and finally the Persians trying to embark on their ships to leave. Panainos painted the Battle of Marathon with Micon's collaboration; Micon painted the battle of the Athenians and the Amazons; and Polygnotus' contribution was the painting of the Judgement of Ajax. The greatest masterpiece of Polygnotus, however, was found at Delphi in the Lesche or club house of the Cnidians. One part of it depicted the sack of Troy, and another part the descent of the hero Odysseus into the Underworld. We have a detailed description of it by Pausanias, the Greek traveler of the second century c.e. who toured Greece and wrote a guidebook describing what he saw.

THE BEGINNINGS OF PERSPECTIVE

introduction: When a modern artist wants to paint in perspective, he draws a horizon line and on the horizon he makes a vanishing point. Then lines that are parallel in real life are drawn so that they intersect at the vanishing point. Greek painters seem first to have discovered the need for something like a vanishing point when they produced painted scenery for theatrical productions. A casual reference in a treatise on architecture and engineering by Vitruvius Pollio, a Roman architect and engineer who worked under the emperor Augustus (27 b.c.e.–14 c.e.), indicates that the first painter to try to show depth by making lines converge on a central point was a craftsman named Agatharcus who produced scenery for the tragedies of Aeschylus (525–456 b.c.e.) in Athens. Democritus and Anaxagoras, who wrote treatises that are lost on perspective, were both philosophers in the fifth century b.c.e.

First there was Agatharcus in Athens who painted scenery for Aeschylus who was producing a tragedy, and wrote a commentary about it. This resulted in Democritus and Anaxagoras writing on the same subject and showing how, once a central point is drawn in a definite location, the sight lines should have a natural relation to the central point and the spread of the visual rays from it, so that painted scenery can portray, by this sleight of hand, a faithful representation of how buildings appear, and though everything is drawn on a vertical flat plane, some parts look as if they have withdrawn into the background and other parts to be positioned in the foreground.

source: Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture. Trans. Morris Hicky Morgan (New York: Dover, 1960): 198. Text modified by James Allan Evans.

The Successors of Polygnotus.

The balancing of light and shade—what modern artists call chiaroscuro—was pioneered by a little-known artist Apollodorus of Athens in the late fourth century b.c.e., but the artist who exploited it was Zeuxis in the early third century b.c.e., who was famous for his illusionist effects. One of his paintings was The Centaur Family which shows a female centaur stretched out on the grass, suckling her two infant centaurs, while the male centaur, who is portrayed as a shaggy beast, leans over them laughing. Zeuxis' contemporary, Parrhasius of Ephesus, took a different approach. He was a careful draftsman, the acknowledged master of contour line. He is best known for his picture of Theseus that adorned the Capitol in Rome years after his death. His other works, besides the obscene subjects with which he supposedly amused himself in his leisure time, are chiefly mythological groups. A picture of the Demos, the personified People of Athens, is among his most famous of these works. In the fourth century b.c.e. Pausias of Sicyon, who was known for the garlands of flowers that he introduced into his murals, also became famous as a master of paintings in the encaustic technique, mixing his pigments in hot wax and applying the wax with a small spatula. He learned the technique from Pamphilus of Sicyon, who was also the teacher of the great Apelles, the favorite painter of Alexander the Great. With Apelles, Greek painting evidently reached its height in the late fourth century b.c.e. One painting of his was particularly famous: it showed the birth of the goddess Aphrodite, rising from the foam of the sea. A similar painting discovered on the wall of a house in Pompeii may have been an attempt to copy Apelles' masterpiece, or at the very least had its inspiration in Apelles' work. Unfortunately, the journeyman wall painter who made the mural did not do a good job.

Macedonian Tombs.

The masterpieces of Greek painting are lost, though sometimes archaeologists uncover bits of evidence that intrigue the imagination. Macedon, an ancient country in northern Greece, has yielded a number of underground tombs from the fourth and third centuries b.c.e. at various sites, the most famous of which are the royal tombs at Vergina, the ancient capital of Macedon. There a tomb has been identified, rightly or wrongly, as the burial place of Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. In one, dating probably to the third century b.c.e. garlands and floral designs are reminiscent of the work of Pausias. Pausias' own works are lost but his influence may be reflected in these tombs.

sources

K. W. Arafat, "Greek Painting," in The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization. Ed. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1998): 516–518.

Vincent J. Bruno, Form and Color in Greek Painting (New York: Norton, 1977).

Christos Doumas, Hellenistic Painting Techniques: The Evidence of the Delos Fragments (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1985).

—, The Wall-Paintings of Thera. Trans. Alex Doumas (Athens, Greece: Thera Foundation, 1992).

Reynold Higgins, Minoan and Mycenaean Art (London, England: Thames and Hudson, 1981).

Sara A. Immerwahr, Aegean Painting in the Bronze Age (University Park; London, England: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990).

Spyridon Marinatos, Life and Art in Prehistoric Thera. The Albert Reckitt Lecture, British Academy (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1972).

Susan B. Matheson, Polygnotos and Vase-Painting in Classical Athens (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).

Friedrich Matz, The Art of Crete and Early Greece: The Prelude to Greek Art. Trans. Ann E. Keep (New York: Crown Publishers, 1963).

Paolo Moreno. Pittura greca da Polignoto ad Apelle (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1987).

Lyvia Morgan, The Miniature Wall-Paintings of Thera: A Study in Aegean Culture and Iconography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

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