The bull-leaping fresco from below the ramp house at mycenae: A study in iconography and artistic transmission

The Annual of the British School at Athens

Volumn 91, Issue , 1996, Pages 167-190

  Shaw, Maria C ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

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EID: 85008543350     PISSN: 00682454     EISSN: 20452403     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0068245400016452     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. One of the more extensive recent analyses of the painting is by S. A. Immerwahr, Aegean Painting in the Bronze Age (University Park and London, 1990), 110-11, 190, with references to earlier publications.
2. I am grateful to Mrs Giuliana Bianco, who executed the watercolours and made the final drawings of the individual fragments, based on my tracings of the fragments.
3. Il. vii. 180, xi. 46; Od. iii. 305.
4. H. Schliemann, Mycenae: A Narrative of Researches and Discoveries at Mycenae and Tiryns (1880; repr. New York, 1967) 130.
5. G. Rodenwaldt, ‘Fragmente mykenischer Wandgemälde’, AM 36 (1911), 221-50.
6. I am grateful to Mrs Giuliana Bianco, who executed the watercolours and made the final drawings of the individual fragments, based on my tracings of the fragments., pl. ix. 2 and 1, respectively.
7. W. Lamb, ‘Frescoes from the Ramp House’, BSA 24 (1919-1921), 189-94.
8. I am grateful to Mrs Giuliana Bianco, who executed the watercolours and made the final drawings of the individual fragments, based on my tracings of the fragments., pl. vii; Immerwahr (n. 2), pl. xvi.
9. Lamb (n. 11), 189-91; Wace's comments on the stratigraphy of the Ramp and the Ramp House (pp. 71-84) are in his contribution to A. J. B. Wace, H. A. Hertley, and W. Lamb, ‘Excavations at Mycenae’, BSA 25 (1921-1923)―the report of the 1919-21 excavation campaign, whose publication occupies the entire volume.
10. Wace (n. 13), 71-4.
11. G.E. Mylonas, Mycenae and the Mycenaean Age (Princeton, 1966), 25-7.
12. E. French, ‘Late Helladic III A 1 pottery from Mycenae’, BSA 59 (1964), 241-61; P.A. Mountjoy, Mycenaean Decorated Pottery (SIMA 73; Göteborg, 1986), 51.
13. Lamb (n. 11), 190.
14. For the possible palatial associations of bull-leaping see Shaw (n. 3) and Hallager and Hallager (n. 3).
15. Unfortunately, I have not yet had the opportunity to read Lyvia Morgan's ‘The cult centre at Mycenae and the duality of life and death’, her contribution to a forthcoming volume dedicated to M. A. S. Cameron's memory; but her title is suggestive. Funerary iconography in the frescos was also detected and discussed by Josée Sabourin, a graduate student in the Ancient Studies Program, University of Toronto, in a seminar report (Mar. 1995) and written paper.
16. Lamb (n. 11), 189-91.
17. Immerwahr (n. 2), 110-11, comments that the architectural façade in the Mycenaean fresco is more simplified and symbolic than the façades respectively represented in the Grandstand Fresco from Knossos and in the miniature painting from the West House at Akrotiri in Thera.
18. I thank the staff of the Nafplion Archaeological Museum for allowing me to look for the fragments, and for their assistance.
19. Ch. Doumas, The Wall-paintings of Thera (Athens, 1992), 63, pl. 29. Interestingly, monkeys’ paws are also depicted this way in the Theran frescos: I thank the staff of the Nafplion Archaeological Museum for allowing me to look for the fragments, and for their assistance., pls 85-6, 122.
20. A similar accident of preservation, partly caused by applying the black pigment for the hair à secco, accounts for the apparent baldness of the so-called dancers in the Sacred Grove Fresco from Knossos (PM iii, pl. xviii).
21. One thinks of a table-like object that appears in a miniature fresco from the palace of Tiryns (G. Rodenwaldt, Tiryns, ii: Die Fresken des Palastes (Athens, 1912), pl. ii. 7). This table, however, rested on the ground rather than being shown at the eye level of a male figure depicted bending over it.
22. J.H. Betts, ‘New light on Minoan bureaucracy: a reexamination of some Cretan sealings’, Kadmos, 6 (1967), 14-40, fig. 12 a.10.1515/kadm.1967.6.1.15
23. The Wall-paintings of Thera. 82, fig. 45.
24. The Wall-paintings of Thera., pl. xviii, bottom r. The women are more likely to be excited spectators than dancers.
25. For the Sacred Grove see PM ii, pl. xviii, bottom r. A similar gesture is that of the women standing in balconies in the Arrival Town in the Fleet Fresco from Thera: their hands are raised in front of, but with the palms away, from the face. The scene makes it reasonable to assume that this is a gesture of welcoming or greeting (Doumas (n. 24), pl. 79).
26. Details are most visible in M. A. S. Cameron, ‘Notes on some new joins and additions to well-known frescos from Knossos’, in W. C. Brice (ed.), Europa: Studien zur Geschichte und Epigraphik der frühen Aegaeis. Festschrift für Ernst Grumach (Berlin; 1967), pl. iv d, more specifically the second hand from the r. in the central fragment, with the characteristic triangular form of the fist.
27. Cameron 1975, slides 47-50. For the fresco fragments see also PM iii. 203-32.
28. M.L. Lang, The Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Western Messenia, ii: The Frescoes (Princeton, 1969), pl. c, 36H105, and the restoration, pl. 124.
29. Younger, The Wall-paintings of Thera.
30. In his 1983 article Younger (n. 40) redated the third schema to c.1410-1380 B.C.
31. A solitary walking or standing bull is an occasional type in both Minoan and Mycenaean seals, but more frequently in the latter.
32. Marinatos (n. 25), pls 182-3. According to E.N. Davis, ‘The Vapheio cups: one Minoan and one Mycenaean?’, Art Bulletin (1974), 472-87, the artist of this particular cup was Minoan.10.2307/3049295
33. However, both the exact positioning of the two slabs and the ethnic identity of the sculptor are issues which continue to be debated by scholars. See S. Hood, The Arts in Prehistoric Greece (Harmondsworth, 1978), 100 and nn. 95 and 96 on p. 254.
34. For a restoration see Marinatos (n. 25), 162, fig. 25.
35. H. A. Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement: An Essay on Space and Time in the Representational Art of the Ancient Near East (1951; repr. New York, 1972), 185-216.
36. As in the astonishing posture of an alighting whiteskinned leaper, whose torso is shown partly in a threequarter view (PM iii. pl. xxi).
37. Almost identical is the positioning of the legs of a man who drags a goat by the horns, in a carved relief on a fragment of a stone vase found NW of the palace at Knossos (PM iii. 184-5, fig. 128). L. Morgan, The Miniature Wall Paintings of Thera: A Study in Aegean Culture and Iconography (Cambridge, 1988), 59, suggests a scene which combines hunt with warfare, since part of the helmet is preserved in the lower edge of the fragment. I would suggest instead that animals are being taken away by the conquerors of a besieged town.
38. There is only one Theran miniature fresco known so far: the so-called Fleet Fresco (Doumas (n. 24), pls 26-48). Also of LM I date is the miniature painting from Tylissos (M.C. Shaw, ‘The miniature frescoes of Tylissos reconsidered’, AA (1972), 171-88).
39. The figures in the Ramp House Fresco can be restored as 0.10-0.12 m tall, nearing the likely height of the leaper from the palace of Pylos. The Knossian toreadors are c.0.25-0.35 m high. Figures in true miniature fresco are c.0.06-0.10 m high.
40. N. Platon, Zakros (New York, 1971), 167.
41. N. Marinatos, Minoan Sacrificial Ritual: Cult Practice and Symbolism (Stockholm, 1986).
42. Evans suggested a pre-seismic MM III B date, but with good reason this has been criticized by others as too early. See the recent discussion in Immerwahr (n. 2), 173-4.
43. R. Hägg, ‘On the reconstruction of the West Façade of the palace at Knossos’, in Hägg and Marinatos 1987, 129-33, fig. 2.
44. Cameron 1975, i, fig. 24, after p. 150.
45. It may be of interest here that the half-rosette motif does not appear in representations of the tripartite shrine such as the one in the well-known Zakros Rhyton, or in two Mycenaean gold repoussé reliefs, one from Volos (E. Vermeule, Greece in the Bronze Age (Chicago and London, 1964), 170, fig. 32 a 10.7208/chicago/9780226853550.001.0001), the other from Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae (J.W. Shaw, ‘Evidence for the tripartite shrine’, AJA 82 (1978), 429-48, 429 fig. 110.2307/504633). By contrast, the halfrosette adorns shrines which are depicted as either in or near a palace, as will be further discussed below. For the use of the half-rosette motif in palatial contexts, including carved stone reliefs used for architectural decoration, see PM ii. 590-6.
46. The piece is illustrated in KFA, pl. v. 1. In PM i. 443, fig. 319, the illustration omits the rosette frieze, which, however, seems to join with the architectural façade.
47. J. W. Shaw (n. 67).
48. The difference has been noted already in my comments on the role of the half-rosette above (n. 67). See further J. W. Shaw (n. 67), 446; Vermeule (n. 67).
49. J.W. Shaw (n. 67) 432-41; A.P. Chapin, ‘The Sanctuary Rhyton from Kato Zakros and the representation of space in Aegean art of the Bronze Age’, AJA 96 (1992), 334 (abstract of her lecture at the 93rd Annual AIA Meeting).
50. Hägg (n. 64), 132, claims that the monumental West Façade of the palace, where he restored a tripartite shrine on an upper storey, was ‘the prototype of the Minoan tripartiteshrine iconography’ (Hägg and Marinatos 1987, 132). A similar view is expressed in N. Marinatos, ‘Divine kingship in Minoan Crete’ (in Rehak 1995, 37-48, esp. 44-5), who claims that ‘The “Tripartite Shrine” is. an iconographical formula derived from, and inspired by the palace façade itself, which was tripartite’. But the West Façade of the palace of Knossos, to which reference is presumably made, is not really tripartite architecturally speaking, even if we accept with Graham that there may have been a window in the central recess of the block that contained magazines 11-16. This block is but a small part of an elaborate façade with more blocks and possible windows in central or other recesses. For an alternative origin of the shrine see M.C. Shaw, ‘The Aegean garden’, AJA 97 (1993), 661-8510.2307/506717, 678 n. 70. K. Krattenmaker, ‘Palace, peak and sceptre: the iconography of legitimacy’ (in Rehak 1995, 49-59), accepts palace and shrine as independent entities in a study that investigates the ‘legitimacy’ of Minoan rulership, but she does not concern herself with the question of which came first.
51. In PM iii. 63-4 Evans describes the piers as built ‘oblong blocks’.
52. Cameron 1975, i. 69-70 and restoration in fig. 11 a.
53. Davis (n. 75) 159.
54. For a discussion of the possible attribution of this fragment (PM iii. 59, fig. 59) to the Grandstand Fresco see Davis (n. 75), 159, who believes that the fresco depicts a façade facing the Central Court of the palace. That building façades may have appeared in the less well preserved Sacred Grove Fresco is clear from the join of a fragment to the left part of the composition made by Cameron (n. 36), figs. 7, 8, which modifies Evans's earlier restoration (PM iii, pl. xviii).
55. For the later restoration see PM iii, pl. xvi. For an illustration of the fragment in question and the reasons for its elimination from the original restoration see PM iii. 83-5, fig. 47.
56. The preserved part of the representation suggests that, putting aside the inherent tripartite structure of the shrine, perfect symmetry was hardly intended. Note, for instance, how each room is painted a different colour, and how columns vary both in colour and in details of shape. We should also note that the dismissed fragment preserves part of a barred band, which matches the lower band of the border of the fresco. The architectural cornice below this band on the fragment is at the right distance for it to belong to the elevated central room of the shrine. Perhaps Cameron also doubted the amended later restoration, for his own restoration of the shrine matches the original one: Cameron (n. 75). 326, figs. 8-9.
57. P. Warren, ‘The Minoan roads of Knossos’, in D. Evely, H. Hughes-Brock, and N. Momigliano, Knossos: A Labyrinth of History. Papers in Honour of Sinclair Hood (Oxford and Northhampton, 1994), 189-210, esp. 190-2, fig. 1, and n. 18, with references to his preliminary reports. The evidence for a platform was a peculiar structure whose façade wall had a rough interior face and lacked doors, its undivided interior being filled with a rubble core. It was built in LM I and used into LM II, if not later. Reasonably, Warren visualized it as one of a whole line of grandstands that would have extended eastward, culminating at the ‘bastion’ on the S side of the Theatral Area.
58. For the Theatral Area and vicinity see PM ii. 578-87. That some of the stands may have been associated with columns, at least those further W, is suggested by Warren's discovery of a column base. It was rebuilt into a later wall next to a large staircase that Warren believes led to the platform (‘The Minoan roads of Knossos’, pl. 28, above; pl. 32, r.). Warren considers the possibility that the column base was originally part of that staircase (‘The Minoan roads of Knossos’. 192-4). Quite possibly, the column that stood on it helped support a roof to provide shade. I still maintain, however, that the known fragments from the Grandstand Fresco itself (PM iii, pl. xvii) do not feature any columns, except those within the Tripartite Shrine depicted in it.
59. J. W. Shaw (n. 67) 438, 448.
60. It is quite possible that much of the construction seen in the Grandstand Fresco was made of wood. The horizontal bands can easily represent a construction using planks or boards, as an outer facing for a rubble core or some other rough construction. Horizontal bands without vertical dividers also characterize the façades of some buildings or rooms, mostly those at the top, in the Arrival Town in the Fleet Fresco from Thera, and in some of the huts in the left area of the ‘Departure Town’ (Doumas (n. 24), respectively pls 79-78, 71). None of these bands can be steps. The problem of recognition may arise from the fact that in some cases (as possibly in the Grandstand Fresco) the planks were shown as white, and can now easily be confused with steps.
61. Davis (n. 75), 156-7.
62. As suggested in a restoration by Cameron (n. 75), 327, fig. 11.
63. I am grateful to Niki Holmes Kantzios for her beautiful drawing. The left side of the area gives an impression of the N side of the West Court and illustrates my view of how stands and steps seen in the Grandstand Fresco may have looked if they had actually existed. Pugilistic competitions of the type depicted in the Boxer's Vase from Haghia Triadha (Marinatos (n. 25), pls 106-7) may also have been performed.
64. The motif is one of the most widespread and longlasting in Aegean iconography, and is known from Minoan, Cycladic, and Mycenaean frescos (Cameron (n. 36), 67; Morgan (n. 51), 82-3).
65. Davis (n. 75), 160.
66. Doumas (n. 24), pl. 58.
67. A. Chapin (n. 72); also ead., ‘Landscape and space in Aegean bronze age art’ (dissertation submitted to the Department of Art, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1995). Compare too the early discussion of space in Theran wall-painting by K. Iliakis, ‘Morphological analysis of the Akrotiri wall-paintings of Santorini’, in Ch. Doumas, Thera and the Ancient World, i (London, 1978), 617-28, esp. 618-21.
68. Bietak (n. 4); M. C. Shaw (n. 3).
69. M. Bietak, Pharaonen und fremde Dynastien im Dunkel (Vienna, 1994), 197, no. 221.
70. Like Dr Bietak, I assume the source of the theme to be the palace of Knossos, though I also see representational differences (Shaw (n. 3)).
71. Similar views are entertained by Younger (n. 40), passim.