Cycladic, Minoan
With that astonishing frank expression and unrelentingly frontal gaze, framed by those shocks of hair, there’s a lot to love about this Latin beauty. She likely hails from Lavinium (some 20 miles from Rome) and the 4th century B.C. Preserved to 74.8 cm, she would have been very nearly life-sized and is thought to have
This little ivory appliqué is a standout in the way the carver has absolutely reveled in the amount of patterns he could fit onto its small surface. The subject is, of course, a warrior whose rather haughty face (prissy pout, supercilious brow, aquiline nose, etc.) is surrounded by that glorious and quintessentially Mycenaean helmet. These
When faced with iconographical remnants divorced from any context that could give a hint at original narrative meaning, classicists face a conundrum: to play the ‘fit that myth’ game, or accept our frustratingly fragmentary understanding of the ancient world. Case in point: this weird ivory plaque (13.6 cm tall) dating to the late 7th century
Flounced and tiered skirts, bare bosoms, and the wonderful Dr. Seussian botanical flourishes (lilies!) are all hallmarks of Minoan art, executed in miniature on the bezel (L. 2.25 cm) of this gold ring. The ring itself was excavated in Knossos by none other than Arthur Evans, and since then has attracted scholarly attention and admiration.
The Minoan aesthetic was so wildly different from other Mediterranean cultures in the second millennium B.C. (safe to say it hasn’t been matched since). The vibrant, whimsical wallpaintings they left behind continue to delight and amaze, even if they present a challenge in interpretation. These details are from a particularly famous landscape scene (the third
This little marble fellow in Athens is pretty special. He hails from Amorgos in the Cyclades, where during the third millennium B.C. figurines developed slightly differently to their brethren on other islands. He belongs to the so-called ‘Plastiras’ type – an early (and potentially short-lived) experimentation into rendering the human form, and one that veered
Discovered within a grave on the citadel of Mycenae, during infamous Schliemann’s excavation of grave circle A, a number of curious gold disks were found. Wafer-thin, they are decorated in repoussé with images of schematically rendered butterflies, allowing for considerable 15th century B.C. artistic license. In the same grave, were several delicate scales of gold
Mykonos might readily bring to mind Super Paradise Beach and a debauched party scene, but the island’s real treasure is this enormous vase, extraordinary by every metric, most immediately visible being size at nearly 1.5 meters tall. Dating to the 8th century B.C. the pithos is decorated entirely in relief, and what is shown is
These are three of the seven masks found during Heinrich Schliemann’s famous late 19th century excavations of Mycenae. They were found over the faces of men (and a boy child) in shaft graves within the grave circles in that wondrously fortified citadel, and clearly marked out the individuals buried with them as men of significant
You might have seen this extraordinary engraved agate before. It was found late in the University of Cincinnati’s 2015 excavation season at Pylos (deep in the Peloponnese) in an intact Mycenaean grave (ca. 1450 B.C.) and the discovery made the front page of the New York Times. And rightly so! The other 1500 or so objects