Theoretical Interrelations Among Theran, Cretan and Mainland Frescoes

Several Theran murals are found to corroborate overall conceptions and even pictorial details of earlier restorations of more fragmentary Cretan murals, notably in relation to paintings of monkeys, crocus fields, floral tributes to female deities, a spiral design and upper border stripes. An interpretation is offered of the Theran Saffron Gathering Frieze as depicting an old Minoan ritual to prepare young women for the domestic duties of womanhood, in relation to the view that the mural decoration of Room 7' at Amnisos, here tentatively restored, was dedicated to the local goddess of child-birth, Eileithyia, mentioned in Linear B.

Some common architectural aspects of Theran and Cretan murals are noted, and the question of similar or unlike schemes of private house decoration on Thera and Crete is raised as one of interest for future examination, if only because the Knossos rulers possibly controlled "what was to go up and where" throughout their realm of jurisdiction. Up to a point, greater pictorial licence is found on Thera.

The chronological value of the Theran murals for the stylistic dating of less well stratified frescoes elsewhere is summarised and illustrated with a hitherto unknown painting from Knossos. The stylistic interrelations of frescoes, pottery and painted plaster tripods at Thera encourage the conclusion that past criticisms of "stylistic dating" of frescoes as invalid are yearly appearing more and more unfounded. Artistic links between Thera and Crete extend, above all, to two Knossian workshops both dateable to MM III B / LM IA or early LM IA, to one of which a restored fragmentary staircase procession fresco is attributed (illustrated); also to probable Knossian artists' work outside the capital city. It is thought the Theran Miniature Ships Frieze, however, contains Mycenaean features. Comparable themes and motifs in the Cretan fresco record seem absent until LM II when these suddenly appear at Knossos - presumbaly because the new Mycenaean rulers there were then the special subject of palatial mural painting. Difficulties and the need for a comprehensive review are admitted.

Two last issues raised concern the genesis of both a Cycladic (Theran) and a later Mycenaean style in wall painting. Both may be derived from earlier Cretan tradition and practice; but the Minoan contribution to an incipient Mycenaean fresco style may have been indirect via Cycladic frescoes. This might explain why LH IIIA - B female figure representations appear to owe much to MM IIIB / LM IA Theran women in frescoes. The Cycladic contribution to a Mycenaean fresco style may have been considerable, as further comparisons could show.

The prospects in this field of study now look bright, especially if the excellent Greek fresco-conservation programme can be fully sustained.

Aegean Bronze Age frescoes have earned over the last century, since their first discovery between 1867 - 1870 (on Thera), a depressing reputation for a poor state of physical preservation from antiquity, uncertain stratigraphical and unknown original architectural positions, and faltering restoration. Their examination may have had more than its fair share of conservational and scholarly difficulties. Now, however, the late Professor S. Marinatos's discoveries at Akroteri have supplied a much needed "lucky break" in this field of study.

We not only have wholly new scenes, some nearly complete and in situ, of hitherto unknown mural themes and subjects to assess; but all the new material, being well dated stratigraphically and carefully recorded and restored, is most valuable for comparative study by those dealing with far less well preserved murals elsewhere.

This paper attempts to underline that value of the Theran frescoes in relation to several comparative and theoretical issues mainly concerning Cretan wall painting, such as we know it, from Knossos and district.

Several large Theran paintings, now exhibited in the National Museum in Athens, have corroborated in general principle and even in extensive detail earlier restorations of more fragmentary Cretan murals. Others from Thera have allowed invaluable insights into the interpretation and theoretical restoration of hitherto problematical compositions. Among the former, the Monkey Frieze from Akroteri (Marinatos 1972, col. pl. D and pls. 91 - 93) confirms the overall conception and several details of a restored design of the Birds and Monkeys Frieze from the House of the Frescoes at Knossos (Cameron 1968, 24, fig. 13).

Those links include the idea of a continuous frieze showing a troop of six or more monkeys actively seeking food in a rocky landscape with water-courses (Cameron 1967, 53ff, 69 and 1968, 11, no. 29: cf. the Theran dado area); a location at the east end of an upper room, on at least two walls where the frieze would be seen at convenient standing eye-level below lintel-level of the room's doorways; three of the restored Knossian monkeys' postures and the compositionally "linking" device of a subject's turned head (at Knossos, birds) at the termination of one end of the frieze also recur "in the original" at Thera.

A newer frieze showing seven maidens gathering saffron in a formally set out field of crocus plants (Marinatos 1976, col. pls. B - F esp., 34) upholds the restored formal arrangement of croci in the upper half of a second mural from the same Knossian house (Cameron 1968, 25, fig. 12). But Marinatos's suggestion that the recipient of the saffron picked in the Theran mural may have been a goddess, "Mistress of Animals", of whom fresco evidence exists (Marinatos 1976, 33f), would now help to explain the juxtaposition in the Knossian mural of croci with Cretan wild goats thought to flank heraldically an olive tree seen in the lower part of that scene. As is well known, agrimia were among the same Minoan deity's favourite animal companions, often seen heraldically flanking her mountain-peak abodes and sanctuaries (e.g. on the Zakro Sanctuary rhyton) whither she may summon them (e.g. as in frescoes from Room 14 of the villa at Hagia Triada: Halbherr 1903, pls. VII, X). That these animals are commonly seen in pairs, as in the Knossos, Hagia Triada and related Theran Oryx frescoes (Marinatos 1971, col. pl. D: cf. the Vapheio cow with raised tail) is of some interest because mating animals may well have been intended (cf. Evans 1935, 500, Suppl. pl. LIV, i). That is, their occurrence in pairs should alert us to the possibility that the scenes containing paired agrimia may have borne certain religious or ritual connotations of fertility and procreation. Our two paintings under discussion, therefore, together suggest that some spring or (?) autumnal rite of saffron-offering was conducted probably in the "Mistress of Animals" honour, apparently at her peak-sanctuaries and for some reason that especially concerned women, estimated in the Theran example to be "between 15 and 25 in age". The mountain location of that ritual seems borne out by both our frescoes: in the rocky projection into the crocus field seen at one point in the Theran painting (Marinatos, 1976, col. pl. C, centre); and in the similar area of the Knossian scene in the almost lost feature painted grey - identified and so restored as "at a guess, perhaps rockwork" (Cameron 1968, 11, no. 40, fig. 6 E). That the ritual may have been Cretan in origin seems likely, for depiction of agrimia, crocus, and floral offerings to a mountain-top goddess at her sanctuary are all attested in the MM I - II pictorial record.

Perhaps it was a preparation from saffron, not henna, which some of the Theran girls depicted used for painting their eye-lids yellow as though they were the "initiates" in the ritual (e.g. Marinatos 1976, col. pl. K; pace, 35). It would be interesting to know, for it is not clear from photographs alone, if only the younger-looking girls had yellow-painted eyes, in view of the fact that an important use of saffron - over and above its collection as a dye - was as a narcotic or sedative drug for general, but especially menstrual, medicinal use (Encycl. Britt. 1975, vol. 9, 890 f). However, to judge by the Linear B saffron tablets, its collection for widespread medicinal use seems unlikely (v. ibid., 8, 764 "75,000 blossoms = 0.45 kg."; Ventris and Chadwick 1973 ed. 130). Even so, it remains just possible that the Theran scene shows us an old Minoan ritual to prepare young women for the domestic duties of womanhood - a theme perhaps related to that of the next fresco for review, for its raison d'être could be similar and we might be dealing with two goddesses with "fused" cults.

Two other Theran paintings (v. infra) lend support to a restoration (1970) of frescoes from three walls of Room 7' of the villa at Amnisos depicting large shallow flower-containers holding radiating sprays of lily, iris and vetch; and to its interpretation as decoration suitable to women's appartments, being a fitting symbolic offering to a divine protectress of women especially. The ancient, and local, goddess of child-birth, Eileithyia, was suggested in part because Möbius had noted the presence in the fresco of the pictorially insignificant but medicinal Micromeria or Satureja Juliana Benth. (1933, 29f; Cameron 1975, i, 183f and iii, 206f. Plate 1 here). The depiction of such a goddess (whose sacred cave is a short walk south of the villa) was hypothetically introduced on the south wall, primarily on the evidence of the over-all nature of the room's decoration and on that of the piece seen at Plate 2A. This shows string-impressed guiding lines like others of the flower-vases here (of which at least two more examples were only realised to exist in 1975 on inspection of some stored pieces in HM: Plate 2 B - C); and below those lines are two rows of "cups of offering" linked by papyrus flowers (Marinatos 1933, 289ff fig. 4; 1932, 86ff). Its location in the original mural would seem pointless if the lower motif had not signified the actual depiction, or overwhelmingly implied, the presence of a deity to whom all the various flowers would be suitable offerings. The Theran comparisons are the lily sprays from the window of Room 4 of the West House (Marinatos 1974, col. pl. 3); and the frieze from the Room of the Ladies (Ibid., 1972, col. pls. E - H). There a procession of women approaches a ? priestess or goddess, beyond whom is a series of monumental, solitary, and formally arranged radiating plants - probably stylised papyri (pace ibid., 38 n. 2). The tectonic design and lily-flower bunches of the Amnisos Lily Frescoes may recur at Akrotiri (Marinatos 1974, pl. 24c and 1976, pl. 31a). This restoration also assumed the scene's collapse from an upper floor into Room 7 below, as similarly happened to the two monkey and the two crocus paintings discussed earlier (Cameron 1968, 14ff with n. 32; and Marinatos 1970, 35 and 1976, 34).

Restorational problems concerning upper border stripes of a Reed Fresco from the Royal Road at Knossos, resembling another from Bronou 2 (Marinatos 1969, 12, pl. 5, 2), and of a spiral frieze from the Hogarth's Houses area, were cleared up on study of the area above the pictorial zone of the Theran monkey Frieze (Marinatos 1972, col. pl. D). Both subjects from Knossos bear close artistic connections to the Cycladic painting, but they come from an earlier stratigraphical horizon and compare favourably to murals from the MM III palace.

The Theran frescoes amply confirm the popularity of the continuous and the "broken" frieze (e.g. Plate 1) in Aegean wall decoration, as also some of the most typical places for murals in the wall-scheme itself (Cameron 1968, 14ff and 1976, 30 with fig. 1). But it is interesting that "panels" (i.e. artistically divided, and often architecturally separated, compositions) are apparently not wholly absent at Akrotiri, to judge by the Boxers Fresco (Marinatos 1971, col. pl. D). How far overall schemes of wall decoration in individual houses, and ultimately in the settlement at Akrotiri, may match or depart from patterns of wall decoration in various architectural classes of building on Crete (tentatively defined in Cameron 1975, i. 218ff) is uncertain, if only because much fresco material from both regions is still to be published. But it is now clear that the range of genre scenes, of subject matter and perhaps even of rooms decorated at Akrotiri suggests a greater degree of pictorial freedom to adorn private houses than seems to have been so in socially comparable domains on Crete, even allowing for the poorer preservation of the latter yet including the richer houses in the town at the Minoan capital itself. Possibly the distance of Thera from Crete was enough to ensure a relatively high degree of political, social, religious and artistic autonomy, such as it would seem was not granted to the Minoan population at large beyond the immediate circle of the palace authorities at Knossos - even to those residing at the other Minoan palaces. But new discoveries on either island could radically change the basis for any explanation of this problem, and in any case the present view should be qualified. Some Cretan control on the pictorial freedom of the Theran ateliers may still have existed, if, that is, we may safely go by the absence in the Theran frescoes so far (for this writer, Thera VII, 1976) of evidence for large-scale male processional figures (beyond the boyish, nude, fishermen: Marinatos 1974, col. pl. 6); for relief frescoes in general; for large-scale griffin compositions; and, above all, for bull-leaping and bull-catching scenes, i.e. for the characteristic and almost exclusive mural fare of the palace at Knossos alone, at least until the rise of the later Mycenaean palaces.

Obviously enough, the chronological precision gained for the safe dating of the Theran frescoes to LM IA (c. 1550 - 1500 BC), or not much earlier, is very important to the question of the validity of stylistic dating by various comparative methods of frescoes stratigraphically less well defined elsewhere. It may justly be claimed that we are dealing with regional styles of painting, each with its own characteristics and oddities. Even so, the number of iconographic, stylistic, compositional and other artistic links between, say, the Theran and Knossian monkey friezes, of the same stratigraphical horizon, need not be laboured here in order to "prove" that stylistic parallels (and then a stylistic sequence) in Aegean B.A. wall painting may indeed be chronologically significant also (pace Lang 1969, 221ff; and Iakovides 1974, 322). Several cases could be cited to illustrate how the new Theran frescoes may in fact corroborate previously proposed stylistic datings of frescoes elsewhere, but let one example suffice: the small olive tree from Knossos, very probably from the palace, Plate 3 A (HM 39, Gallery XVI; Evans 1967, pl. VIII, fig. 3). Some thirty more tree fragments were omitted from this restoration, and at least one female figure, facing left, with skirt or jacket adorned with a stylised iris pattern (Plates 3 B - D, esp. 3 D, 10).

The composition had been attributed to LM IA on stylistic comparison primarily with other Cretan murals from LM IB stratigraphical contexts, but also with LM / LH IA vases where the iris motif recurs (Furumark 1941, motif 10 A. Iris, 1; Cameron 1964, 122, no. 35 (tree) and 1975, i, 459 (2). By far the closest stylistic fresco parallels for that motif now appear on two girls' skirts in the LM IA (or slightly earlier) Saffron Gathering Frieze from Akroteri (Marinatos 1976, col. pls. D and F), whence also another possible ceramic instance of the same motif at the same date has turned up (Marinatos 1974, pl. 70, top right). In that case, it would serve to underline the fact that Theran LM / LC IA vase discoveries, and of painted plaster tripods, are continuously affirming the general validity of the stylistic dating of the frescoes where the fresco comparisons themselves seem to warrant it, such are the close artistic similarities among all three classes of painted object. Further, the vases are clearly "copying" the murals, not vice versa, which makes the murals the earlier chronologicaly - whether or not any interval in time for the manufacture of "matching" subjects is still detectable today. But the chief point to be made is that past criticisms of the validity of stylistic dating in this field of study are appearing more unfounded with each season's campaign at Akrotiri - and, indeed, at many other sites.

There are other iconographical and stylistic links among the Theran and Cretan frescoes, and many of these, in turn, with town and palace murals at Knossos. Other connections lead to several provincial Cretan sites where, however, visiting artists trained, if not permanently based, in the capital city at Knossos may have excecuted the mural decoration. I should count the artists of Room 7' at Amnisos, of Room 14 of the villa at Hagia Triada (v. Halbherr, loc. cit.), and of House A at Prasa (Platon 1951, 246ff; Cameron BSA 71, 7 n. 20, forthcoming) among them. Although two of these three fresco groups come from LM IB, not LM IA, destruction contexts, all display significant artistic links with the LM IA Theran paintings which encourage their attribution to the earlier period.

As for connections with Knossos here, the Theran murals with wild creatures, notably in Nilotic landscapes or others of the Aegean natural world including the "outdoor elements" in several figured murals, seem especially close in their themes and artistry to MM IIIB / LM IA town house decoration rather than to the contemporary palace decoration, where there was evidently less interest in such scenes.

On the other hand, several details of Theran figure depiction including jewelery, costume arid textile patterns find close similarities in the palatial figured frescoes from Knossos in particular. These connections appear, for the most part, to bear upon the work of two distinct Knossian "schools" or ateliers especially, the one that decorated the House of the Frescoes among others in the town (Cameron, op. cit.), the other being that which perhaps redecorated much of the palace after the MM III B earthquake - to which painters a very fragmentary procession fresco, depicting Minoan men on (?) the Grand Staircase of the palace, may be attributed (Plate 4). Alas, only hairstyle, facial features, overlapping kilts, direction, and possible offerings of lotus flowers now remain of the original painting; but enough survives to suggest that the differences between this and the well known Procession Fresco at Knossos (Evans 1928, 719ff, fig. 450 and pl. XII) are as marked as those between the Senmut and the Rekhmire "Keftiu" paintings in Dyn. XVIII Egypt. Staircase decoration of some kind is also forthcoming from LM IA Akrotiri (Marinatos 1976, 23 citing Thera VI). But beyond such new data from Thera, there is good reason to assign both workshops, though almost opposites in their thematic interests, to the one period, sometime within MM IIIB / LM IA - early LM IA (Cameron 1975, i, 402ff and 433ff; also BSA 71, 13 n. 46). Arguably, it was perhaps these Knossian muralists who inspired new important directions in Aegean art at large in the Late Bronze Age. Yet whatever the merits of that view, it does not take into account a wholly different group of iconographical links with both Cretan and Mycenaean wall painting, as yet uncited, which raise especially complex and far-reaching issues.

The long Miniature Frieze from Room 5 of the West House at Akroteri shows various forms of cloak, a kilt longer than the usual Minoan one (viz. like the Cupbearer's), short-cropped hairstyles, and military equipment (tower shields, long spears, swords slung from baldrics and boars' tusk helmets) which LH I mainland comparisons cogently suggest were features of common Mycenaean use, attire or appearance. Further, the military tone of the entire scene, with some fatal mishap at sea and armed landing-parties at two points, has a distinctly Mycenaean flavour about it, by general Minoan but especially contemporary Minoan fresco analogy. Closest fresco links seem to lie with LH / LH I Hagia Irini on Keos where "miniature" scenes of hunting animals and a chariot were discovered, features that again seem more Mycenaean than Minoan at this date at a site where the ceramic finds indicated a distinct mixture of local, Minoan, Mycenaean and Cycladic wares (Caskey 1972, 391ff). If these impressions are reasonable, one may surmise further if the Theran fresco (Marinatos 1974, col. pls. 7 and 9) perhaps represents a Mycenaean fleet in action in Cycladic waters (contra Marinatos's Libyan views, 1974, 44ff), although, against this, the helmsmen with large oars always appear to wear the typical Minoan brief kilt. But if Minoans, there is no reason - nor proof - why some members of that nation, long skilled in thalassocratic arts, should not have served the masters of a Mycenaean armed fleet. The chief problem that arises seems not to be that of the historical likelihood of such possibilities at this date; nor even that of their representation at a Cycladic site with various strong Minoan relations. Rather, it is that the occurrence of a similar range of themes and motifs (in the sense that they, too, could plausibly be termed "Mycenaean") seems entirely restricted in the known Cretan fresco record to paintings (so far from Knossos and the later site at Hagia Triada alone) reasonably attributable to within LM II - IIIA 1 (c. 1450 - 1375 BC) but not earlier. In that case, their appearance in the last series of figured frescoes known from Bronze Age Crete could be interpreted as evidence for the depiction of the Mycenaean ruler-administrators of the entire island (or of proselyte Minoan followers) at the time of the Knossos Linear B archives, of LM II - IIIA 1 Palace Style, 'Ephyrean' and kylix pottery; and of the contemporary "warrior" graves and "'beehive" tombs at such sites in the Knossos area as the modern Hospital, Hagios Ioannes (Kephala), Zapher Papoura, Isopata and in other nearby hillside cemeteries. The inference is that such frescoes as the Procession Fresco from me Knossos palace depict Mycenaean men, not Minoans, and that the latter literally "'disappear from the picture" except as experts in daring acrobatic spectacles! There, it seems, great shields replaced Minoan processions on grand stairways (cf. Evans 1935, 881).

Clearly, a detailed review of any archaeological and artistic evidence for and against such views is now required to show, for example, whether or not the Cretan paintings concerned should be dated as here suggested; or if ethnic identifications in LM / LC / LH I to IIIA periods and frescoes are indeed distinguishable; or if changes in coiffure, apparel and pictorialised occupations in the Late Bronze Age should or should not be seen more simply as personal or local social responses to latest fads and "fashions". While to detail my own views here is not possible (1975, i, 375 - 652, with 671 - 784 on stratigraphical details), two further major issues should be mentioned. First, the question of the artistic origins of the Theran fresco ateliers, and whether these were first inspired by Cretan fresco work or vice versa.

On this issue the Greek mainland may first be excluded, for no evidence is known for a mainland industry of pictorial wall painting before c. 1550 BC at the earliest, and occurrences of any wall plasters, painted or unpainted, are rare on the Greek mainland throughout the Early and Middle Helladic age (c. 3000 - 1600 BC). Crete, however, had a tradition of wall plastering from remote Neolithic times and of mural painting since EM II, if not EM I (Levi 1958, 167ff); and mural ornamentation began there by MM IA (c. 1900 BC) and pictorialisation by MM IIIA, with the rise of the Second Palaces c. 1700 BC. Crete thus becomes the logical choice as the chief source for the particular techniques, method, organisation and style of painting, as much as for the "content", adopted in the Theran murals, not surprisingly, perhaps, if we recall Theran indebtendness to Minoan prototypal architecture. While there may be notable artistic relations between MM III Knossian and MM IIIB / LM IA Theran murals which may allow us to suggest that Crete, and especially Knossos, initiated this Aegean art form in painting, the issue nevertheless remains open because MM / MC III strata on Thera have not yet been explored extensively. So the presence or absence of a flourishing mural painting industry there in that period or earlier remains unproven one way or the other. However, the idea of a substantial Cretan debt to the Cyclades in the field of mural painting seems at present most improbable.

A last issue concerns the possible origins of a Mycenaean style in wall painting of which we know today something only of its later stages, in LH IIIA - B (c. 1400 - 1200 BC) although LH I or IIA floral designs are attested at Mycenae from below the East Lobby floor (Lamb 1921 - 23, pl. XXV, b 1 - 2). No doubt Mycenaean wall painting will eventually be plausibly distinguished stylistically from both Cretan and Cycladic branches of the art, as one of three broad regional styles, among each of which there may occur local sub-styles of provincial workshops. In that case, and if it is right to exclude mainland Greece on the issue of the genesis of a Theran or Cycladic regional style, then an interesting consideration presents itself.

Few would contend the derivation in the final analysis of Mycenaean mural painting in large part from an earlier Cretan tradition. But this need not mean that any such Minoan influence was direct, as, for example, through the direct migration there of Cretan artists - even if that is one reasonable, if wholly unsubstantiated, possibility. The Theran frescoes allow another explanation, that Minoan stimulus in Mycenaean wall painting was initially brought about indirectly through the intermediary art of the Cyclades. There a fusion of true local and quasi-Minoan artistics characteristics would meet Mycenaean eyes, if, as was suggested earlier, commercial or political interrelations had already encouraged Mycecenaean exploration of the seas: for wall painting was then the major applied public art form. In that case, a strong Cycladic role in the genesis of a Mycenaean style in mural painting early in LH I - II would go far to explain the following similarities, in large-scale female figure depiction alone, that turn up in both MM IIIB / LM IA Theran and LH IIIA - B Mycenaean frescoes:

1. double chin;
2. long ears with schematised (even "triangular") interior details of ear-lobes;
3. tear-glands incorrectly on both sides of the pupil;
4. pseudo ¾ views of open jackets with a single breast outlined against the further sleeved biceps;
5. gross exaggeration of the breast's size;
6. awkward anatomical proportions in the body's elongation or reduction at the expense of proportionate head, neck, feet and/or sometimes arms;
7. either very heavily gathered, essentially non-bejewelled, single locks of hair at the nape, or hairstyles that seem curiously unengaged with the head;
8. a tendency to use very heavy black contour-lines for drapery, and
9. to simplify dress details by Minoan analogy, especially "alloyer" dress patterns;
10. a liking for ankle-length cloaks with frontal, diagnonally frilled, hems, and
11. for bouquets of four - or five - petalled "roses".

Of these features, nos. 6 - 9 occur with varying degrees of infrequency in Cretan frescoes attributable to LM II to IIIA 1, but all are otherwise most rare or absent in the known Cretan fresco record. (cf: from Akroteri: Marinatos, 1972, col. pls. F-H, J-K; 1974, col. pl. 5, right; 1976, col. pls. A-K and pls. 58-66. Mycenaean frescoes: Thebes, Reusch 1956, pls. 14-15 and figs. 2-14; Tiryns, Rodenwaldt, 1912, col. pls, VIII-IX; Pylos, Lang 1969, pls. 127-128 and col. pls. D (top left) and 0; Mycenae, Taylour 1968, pl. Xa and fig. 2, and lakovides 1974 ed., 323-324). Such an analysis could be enlarged to examine the common ground in Theran and Mycenaean frescoes in general, adding weight to this explanarion of Aegean fresco interrelations.

But whatever the right outcome, the prospects for further illuminating mural discoveries, in the Cyclades especially, but on Thera in particular, are bright. So long, that is, as the admirable conservational programme to deal with the frescoes, initiated by the late Professor Marinatos and his team of professional conservators, is maintained to the utmost and due principles of purpose as well as ingenuities of conservational technique continue to be observed. Their skill and dedication have rightly earned both lay and scholarly praise and gratitude.

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