Aegean Art

Palace complex at Knossos Culture/Period: Aegean, Minoan Art Location: Crete Date: 1500 BC - pier and door construction, ashlar masonry - largest structure - included central court, storerooms, shrines, residential, etc. - no fortifications - maze-like for defense and control - many light wells Toreador fresco Culture/Period: Aegean, Minoan Art Location: Knossos, Crete Date: 1450 BC - made with wet fresco - naturalistic in movement - could be continuous narrative - has two white men, a bull, and black man jumping over bull - might be a succession from boy to man Citadel and Palace of Mycenae Culture/Period: Greek, Mycenaean Art Location: Mycenae Date: 1400 BC - made with cyclopean masonry, ashlar masonry - built for protection, manipulated visitors to be at residents' advantage - corbel arch marks the gate - Lion's Gate - thrown room at the highest point: megaron, clerestory technique Lion Gate Culture/Period: Aegean, Mycenaean Art Location: Mycenae Date: 1250 BC - made of limestone - huge lintel over gateway, relieving triangle provided space for thin stone relief - heads would have been made of gold/clay and put on afterwards with post-and-lintel - repeled bad spirits Treasury of Atreus Culture/Period: Aegean, Mycenaean Art Location: Mycenae Date: 1250 BC - made of limestone - built in tholos to draw attention (later burglarized) - influenced by Egyptians - dromos entrance - man made hill covering Lion Hunt Scene Culture/Period: Aegean, Mycenaean Art Location: Mycenae Date: 1600-1550 BC - made with bronze, gold, silver, and niello - decorated on black niello of the knife - naturalism in the lions' movement pier and door construction recesses that allow a great deal of flexibility in the admission of light and ventilation, and in the control or facilitation of movement; separates a hall into two unequal parts fresco a durable method of painting on a wall by using watercolors on wet plaster megaron a rectangular audience hall that has a two-column porch and four columns around a central air well cyclopean masonry massive, crude walls that foreigners thought could only be made by the giants ashlar masonry carefully cut and regularly shaped blocks of stone, fitted together without mortar corbel arch each course of masonry projects slightly beyond course beneath it, until the walls meet in an irregular arch to cover the span corbel vault circular room formed by progressively projecting courses of stone or brick, which eventually meet to form the highest point of the vault relieving triangle the triangular opening above the lintel that serves to lighten the weight to be carried by the lintel itself niello a black sulfurous substance used as a decorative inlay for incised metal surfaces; the art or process of decorating metal in this manner