Photos of the Very Best of the Beautiful Ancient Minoan art & Museum Antiquities from the best archaeology museums. Photos by photographer Paul E Williams. (TIP – use the icons below the slideshow for thumbnail photos and info)
Photos of Ancient Minoan art & Museum Antiquities
Over 1800 Photos of Ancient Minoan art, Minoan paintings, Minoan pottery, Minoan antiquities and artefacts from the very best Minoan museum collections.
The Minoans were a Bronze Age Aegean civilization inhabiting the island of Crete and surrounding Aegean Islands from around 3000 BC to 1100 BC. Sir Arthur Evans excavations at Knossos in 1900 and believed that he had discovered the Palace of King Minos. He therefore named the civilisation the Minoans.
The sophisticated art and antiquities excavated at Minoan sites show that the Minoans were great craftsmen and creative artists. The Minoans decorated their walls with fresco paintings using the buon fresco technique which consists of painting with pigment ground in water on a thin layer of wet, fresh, lime mortar or plaster. As the plaster dries the paint becomes an integral part of the wall.
Minoan Painting
The Minoans had a distinct painting style with shapes formed by curvilinear lines that add a feeling of liveliness to the paintings. The colour palette is based in earth tones of white, brown, red, and yellow. Black and vivid blues paints used combined to create vivid and rich decorations.
The most famous Minoan paintings are the Bull leaper, Blue lady and blue monkey frescoes.
Skilled Minoan potters produced decorated and plain pottery ranging from bull head shaped rhytons, to pottery larnax baths and coffins.
Minoan Rhytons
Rhytons are vessels from which libations were poured or drunk. Many rhythms have an opening at the bottom through which the liquid poured. Others didn’t have a hole and were used as drinking cups. Often rhytons were conical so they could not usually be set down on a surface without spilling their contents.
Minoans made bull shaped Rhytons, and well as conical rhythons decorated with octopus designs or simply left undecorated.
Pottery larnax coffin boxes were often used as a container for human remains in Minoan burials. The Minoan larnax chest was decorated on the outside and usually had a pitched roof.
Minoan Octopus Pottery
One distinctive Minoan decorative design on pottery was that of s stylised octopus. This design can be seen in our pictures decorating rhythons, pots and vases.
Browse pictures and images of Minoan art, paintings & pottery antiquities and artefacts from Heraklion & Athens Archaeological Museum & Thira Akrotiri Museum
All photos can be downloaded as editorial royalty free images. Property Rights belong to the relevant museums.
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