Aegean art

The art of the civilizations that flourished around the Aegean (an area that included mainland Greece, the Cyclades Islands, and Crete) in the Bronze Age, about 2800–1100 BC. Despite cultural interchange by way of trade with the contemporaneous civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Aegean cultures developed their own highly distinctive styles.

Cycladic art
The art of the Bronze Age civilization in the Cyclades Islands, about 2500–1400 BC, is exemplified by pottery with incised ornament and marble statuettes, usually highly stylized female nudes representing the Mother Goddess in almost abstract simplicity, her face reduced to an elongated oval with a triangular nose. The Cycladic culture preceded the Minoan, ran concurrently with it, and eventually shared its fate, becoming assimilated into the Mycenaean culture.

Minoan art
The art of Bronze Age Crete, about 2300–1100 BC, is of a high aesthetic standard, reflecting the artistic orientation and zest for life of the Minoan people. Its fine pottery, painted in a fresh, spontaneous style with plant and animal motifs curving to suit the form of the vases, comes in various styles but is best represented by ‘light-on-dark’ and Kamares-style ware (polychrome on a dark background). Its magnificent palaces, such as Knossos, Phaestos, and Mallia, were decorated with cheerful frescoes depicting scenes from everyday life, plants, birds, leaping fish, and dolphins; fragments remain, such as the lily fresco from Ambisos (Iraklion Museum, Crete). The culture came to an end when, after the eruption of the volcano on Thera (now Santorini) and the destruction of the Minoan centre on that island, the Mycenaeans gained control in the Aegean.

Mycenaean art
Mycenaean art, about 1580–1100 BC, reflects the warlike preoccupations of the mainland Mycenaean society, both in character and in the subjects portrayed. Fortified citadels were developed, such as that of Mycenae itself, which was entered through the Lion Gate, about 1330 BC, so called because of the massive lion figures, carved from stone, that adorned it. Stylized frescoes decorated its palaces and its pottery, typically dark on light, was centred on large bowls (kraters), depicting scenes of warfare. Perhaps its over-riding artistic contribution lies in its metalwork, principally in bronze and gold; for example, the royal funeral mask (National Museum, Athens), about 1500 BC. Many of the ideas and art forms of the Mycenaean and other early seafaring civilizations were later adapted by the Greeks (see Greek art).