THE ADOPTION OF PICTORIAL
IMAGERY IN MINOAN WALL
PAINTING: A COMPARATIVIST
PERSPECTIVE
by Charles Gates
1.That this article could not have been written without the groundwork laid by Sara Immerwahr in Aegean Painting in the Bronze Age goes almost without saying. For her support and friendship, dating back to my years in Chapel Hill, and the example of her enthusiasm for the Aegean Bronze Age, I am most grateful. I would like to express my thanks also to Pietro tello for sending me a copy of his
published paper (1998) delivered at the Italian Symposium of Aegean Studies, Rome, February 18-20, 1998; and to Norbert Karg and Nicholas David for
advice on, respectively, chronological and ethnoarchaeological matters.
The revised version of this article
was submitted in August 2000;
lications available after that date, most notably S. Sherratt, ed., The Wall ings of Thera (Athens 2000), could not be taken into consideration.
2. On the value of the comparativist perspective, see Lloyd 1991, p. xii.
A striking feature of Minoan wall paintings is the sudden adoption of torial imagery in the Neopalatial period.1 This change calls for an nation, but so far, that explanation has proved elusive. Those specialists in
Aegean frescoes who have addressed this problem have focused on the
possible artistic antecedents or on the functions of the mural imagery, tably its putative religious and decorative purposes, but have not ered the circumstances that gave rise to such imagery in the first place. This paper will explore these issues of origins and functions, with ticular attention paid to Knossos. The explanation proposed here, with the help of three cross-cultural comparisons, is that pictorial imagery in Minoan wall painting resulted from the major political change that marked the transition from the Protopalatial to Neopalatial periods on Crete: the solidation of island-wide power in Knossos, in the hands not of an crat, but of an oligarchic or theocratic regime. Pictorial imagery, at least in Neopalatial Crete, is not only an artistic preference, but also an
logical choice, an expression of particular political, social, and religious
conditions.
First, an introduction of the early Neopalatial wall paintings that spire this study is in order, with comments on their larger Aegean and eastern Mediterranean context. Second, we shall review previous theories explaining the arrival and purposes of pictorial imagery in Minoan
rals. Third, we shall step outside the Bronze Age Aegean and examine
three other cases in which pictorial images make an abrupt, unexpected
arrival in wall painting: late Medieval Siena, 16th-century Malinalco (Mexico), and 20th-century Mexico. Because these cases share political,
religious, and architectural contexts that compare, in a broad way, with
those proposed for early Neopalatial Knossos, the detailed information about them that textual sources provide, about their origins and their
aims, allows us to view Knossian intentions with a richer, more fruitful perspective.2 Finally, with the lessons learned from these comparisons kept in mind, we shall return to Crete and especially to Knossos, examine dence for sociopolitical and ideological changes in the Neopalatial period,
and evaluate the appearance of pictorial imagery within the context of
Focus here is on the Cretan, in particular the Knossian, examples of what Sara Immerwahr calls the First Phase of Aegean wall painting, ing in the first part of the Neopalatial period, from MM III through LM IA.3 I shall use Immerwahr's catalogue as the basic corpus of examples, a
convenient point of departure.4 I shall follow her datings as well; I am
interested in broader questions that should not be affected by minor sions in her chronology.5 Dating within this period will not be so tant; our sample is sufficiently small and the difficulties in assigning
cise dates so great that any arguments based on chronology within our
First Phase may be unconvincing.
Of the First Phase frescoes in Immerwahr's catalogue, twenty-one
entries come from the Palace of Minos,6 six from Knossian villas,7 and ten from elsewhere on Crete.8 Note that the use of figural imagery in mural paintings is by no means universal on Crete; the other three best-known palaces, Mallia, Phaistos, and Kato Zakros, have yielded virtually none. Of the subjects depicted, decorative motifs, such as spirals, carry on traditions established in the Protopalatial period.9 Our focus is instead on new themes
expressed with pictorial imagery: landscape and nature scenes, animals,
and people, both miniature and of a larger scale.?1 Pure landscapes are not known from the palace at Knossos, but four have been found in the Knossian villas11 and three elsewhere on Crete.12 Frescoes with animals as the cipal feature have come from the palace (three examples13), the Knossian villas (one example14), but not from other locations. People (excluding those seen in the miniature frescoes) occur in eight cases at the Palace of Minos15 but not at all in the villas, and in three examples outside Knossos.16 Lastly, miniature scenes have been found at the palace (five examples plus various fragments17) but not in the villas; elsewhere, examples have been found at Katsamba, Prasa, and Tylissos.l8 Stuccoed reliefs are represented at Knossos, in the palace19 but not in the villas, and at Palaikastro and Pseira.20
3. Immerwahr 1990, pp. 39-75. In
absolute dates, we are dealing roughly with the 17th and 16th centuries B.C. Dating for this period continues to be controversial, with much weight placed on the date of the eruption ofThera. For further discussion of chronological issues, see below.
4. Immerwahr 1990, pp. 169-190.
5. Such as those suggested by ren (1991, p. 173), or by Niemeier
(1994, pp. 84-85).
6. Kn 1, 6-16, 17 (various ments), 18 (various fragments), 19, 36-38,40,41,42.
7. Kn 2-5, 43, 44. To this can be added the Floral Fresco in the
plored Mansion, not catalogued by Immerwahr but included in a
ary list of fragments (1990, p. 179, no. 15); now discussed at length by
Chapin (1997).
8. Amnisos: Am 1-3; Ayia Triada: A.T. 1; Katsamba: Ka 1; Palaikastro: Pa 1; Prasa: Pr 1; Pseira: Ps 1; and
Tylissos: Ty 1, 2.
9. The palace at Knossos has yielded
six examples of decorative motifs dating
to the First Phase (Kn 36-38, 40-42), the Knossian villas two (Kn 43, 44).
Immerwahr catalogues none from where on Crete. See note 41 for the decorative traditions in Protopalatial wall paintings.
10. On the distribution of subjects, see Shaw 1997.
11. Kn 3 (House of the Frescoes), 4 (South House), 5 (Southeast House),
and the Floral Fresco from the
plored Mansion (see note 7).
12. Amnisos: Am 1-3; Ayia Triada
A.T. 1 might be included here, nature fresco with goddess.
13. Kn 1 (blue monkeys), 6
phins), 34 (stucco relief of a lion's mane, or a bull?).
14. House of the Frescoes: Kn 2 (monkeys and bluebirds).
15. Women: Kn 10-14; men:
Kn 7, 8 (various), 9.
16. Women: Ayia Triada: A.T. 1 (goddess); Palaikastro: Pa 1; and Pseira:
Ps 1 (goddess and votary?).
17. Kn 15 ("Grandstand" or ple"), 16 ("Sacred Grove and Dance"),
17 (fragments), 18 (fragments), 19 (boys playing game?).
18. Katsamba: Ka 1 (flying birds; textile pattern?); Prasa: Pr 1 (cypress trees); Tylissos: Ty 1 (men, women, trees, architecture, etc.).
19. Kn 38 (spirals), 34 (lion's mane
or bull?), 7 ("Priest-King"), 9 ("Jewel fresco"), 8 (various).
20. Palaikastro: Pa 1 (arm of
Knossos and Crete are not, however, the only sources of striking mains of Minoan-type murals of this period. Contemporary wall and floor frescoes from a handful of other sites in the Aegean and the eastern terranean, art works discovered or restudied within the past decade, have enriched our knowledge of First Phase painting. These murals from Akrotiri
(on Thera), Alalakh (southern Turkey), Tel Kabri (northern Israel), and
Tell el-Dab'a (ancient Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos, northeastern Egypt) show the techniques, subjects, and styles characteristic of Minoan
coes. The many well-preserved paintings from Akrotiri have become a classic corpus of mid-2nd-millennium B.C. Aegean art.21 Wall painting
fragments from Alalakh level VII show grass or reeds, foliage and border elements, a griffin, and a bull's horn.22 Frescoes from Tel Kabri include a floor painting that imitates stone paving, divided into a grid of red lines decorated with floral motifs, and a miniature fresco from a wall, with a scene of an Aegean town in a coastal landscape that recalls the Miniature Fresco from the West House, Akrotiri.23 Fresco finds from Tell el-Dab'a
include scenes of bull-leaping, a theme identified in particular with
Knossos.24 In short, the subject matter of these Minoan-type frescoes calls that of Crete, and so forms part of a common tradition that would seem to center on Knossos-or for which Knossos at least can stand as
representative.25
In addition, the chronology of these frescoes favors Knossos as the site of the earliest pictorial imagery. Immerwahr, whose relative datings
we are following here, begins her First Phase frescoes in MM IIIB, but places most of the examples from this group after the MM IIIB
quake at Knossos and the rebuilding of the palace.26 Her First Phase ends in later LM IA with the eruption of the volcano on Thera. The frescoes of Akrotiri were, of course, buried in the debris from that eruption. They were thus contemporaries of the early Cretan pictorial frescoes, and part of Immerwahr's First Phase. The span of time in which they were painted
votary?). On relief frescoes in general,
see Hood 1978, pp. 71-77, and the
detailed treatment by Kaiser (1976, pp.257-312,316-318).
21. Important studies of the wall paintings of Akrotiri, with full
ences, would include Marinatos 1984, Davis 1986, Morgan 1988, Immerwahr 1990, Doumas 1992, Televantou 1994.
The proceedings of conferences held on
Thera in 1978 (Doumas 1978, 1980) and 1989 (Hardy et al. 1990) contain
useful discussions of the wall paintings, often with the aim of distinguishing what is local from what is Minoan;
such papers include Cameron 1978, Shaw 1978, Hood 1990, Poursat 1990, Davis 1990, Laffineur 1990, Marinatos 1990, Morgan 1990, Televantou 1990.
The recent publication of papers from a
1997 conference, "The Wall Paintings
of Thera," will provide a valuable tribution to these ongoing discussions (see note 1). For the context of the wall paintings within the town of Akrotiri, see Doumas 1983.
22. Woolley 1955, pp. 228-234, pls. 36b-39c; Niemeier 1991, pp. 196; Niemeier and Niemeier 1998, pp. 69-71, 82-85.
23. Niemeier 1991, pp. 196-199; Niemeier and Niemeier 1998, pp. 73, 76-78.
24. Bietak 1996, pp. 72-81 and pls. III-VIII, 33; Shaw 1995; Morgan 1995; Marinatos 1998; Niemeier and Niemeier 1998, pp. 78-82.
25. The fascinating problem posed
by these eastern frescoes, namely by whom and in what circumstances they were executed, lies beyond the scope of this paper. See Niemeier and
Niemeier 1998, pp. 85-96. These Minoanizing frescoes are
distinct from wall and floor paintings of the local art traditions in the Near East and in Egypt, although all form part of the larger eastern Mediterranean/Near Eastern/Egyptian art world. standing the relationship between them has been and will surely continue to be a focus of scholarly interest. On Near
Eastern wall painting, see Nunn 1988.
On the few surviving Egyptian palatial wall paintings, notably at Malkata and
Tell el-Amarna, see Robins 1997, p. 136; Smith 1998, pp.
191. For comparisons of art works among these regions: Kantor 1947,
Smith 1965, Cline and Harris-Cline 1998, Gates 1999.
has been estimated at fifty years, starting with repairs that followed a aging earthquake and finishing with the great eruption.27 A relative nology of these paintings within this fifty-year period has not been tempted; therefore we do not know how early these murals first appeared.28
On Crete, the time span from the MM III/LM IA transition until the
eruption has been variously estimated, by two opponents in chronological matters, from ca. 80 years (Warren)29 to ca. 47 years (Manning).30 Even if we accept the more precise range, Knossos would have priority over Akrotiri in the earliest appearance of pictorial imagery in murals, thanks to the fragments from MM IIIB.31
The relationship of the remaining wall painting groups, those from Alalakh VII, Tel Kabri, and Tell el-Dab'a, to those from First Phase Crete and Thera, depend on how one views the absolute chronology of the 2nd-millennium B.C. The first chronological touchstone is the date of the
eruption of the Thera volcano; the dating of the Akrotiri frescoes and
indeed those of the First Phase murals of Crete depend directly on this
determination. The possibilities as recently supported by chronological specialists range over a 100-year period, from 1628 B.C. to 1520 B.C.32
Alalakh VII was destroyed some time before 1540 B.C.,33 and the frescoes from Tel Kabri are contemporary with those of Alalakh VII.34 Lastly, the wall painting fragments from Tell el-Dab'a date to the 16th century B.C., although exactly when is the subject of a heated controversy.
Bietak, the excavator, attributes them to a fortress of the early New Kingdom, that is, some time after Ahmose, the first king of the teenth Dynasty, captured Avaris in ca. 1535 B.C.35 But this dating
resents a change from earlier statements in which Bietak assigned the
fragments either to an earlier fortress of the later Hyksos periods, ca.
1540 B.C., or to both the Hyksos fortress and the
Dynasty construction.36 The Hyksos, the Canaanite kings of the Fifteenth 27. Morgan 1988, pp. 5-10.
28. Doumas, e.g., states simply that "they are all Late Cycladic creations, though some are clearly earlier than others" (1992, p. 30).
29. Warren 1999, esp. pp. 901-902. 30. Manning 1999, summarized on p. 340.
31. The possibility of Theran ity has been raised, however: Doumas 1992, p. 17.
32. The subject has been hensively analyzed by Manning (1999, superseding 1995, pp. 200-216), who
favors a date of 1628 B.c., but who mits to a possible, if less likely, date of the mid-16th century, 1530/1525 B.C. at the latest. For 1520 B.C., see Warren
1998 and 1999 (a change from 1535/ 1525 B.C. or 1560/1550 B.c. proposed
ten years earlier, in Warren and Hankey
1989, p. 215). To these one can add
Manning 2000, a Web site that one
hopes will become a public forum for discussion of 2nd-millennium B.C. chronology.
33. This low date for the destruction of Alalakh VII by Hattusili I reflects a recent downdating of Mursili I's sack of
Babylon to 1499 B.C. (Gasche et al.
1998). For an earlier, standard "low chronology" date of ca. 1575 B.C., see
Gates 1987, McClellan 1989. For
cent discussions of the Alalakh VII chronology that prefer an even earlier date that conforms with a century B.C. date for the eruption of
Thera, see Niemeier and Niemeier 1998, pp. 70-71; Manning 1999, pp. 341-366. The issue has been most
recently taken up at the International
Colloquium on Ancient Near Eastern Chronology (2nd millennium B.C.),
7-9 July, 2000, in Ghent, with Ancient
Near Eastern historians and ologists affirming their support for a
low chronology (M.-H. Gates, pers. comm.).
34. Niemeier and Niemeier 1998,
p. 73.
35. Bietak 1996, pp. 73-80; 1999, pp. 40-48. The Eighteenth Dynasty
began ca. 1550 B.C., according to the standard chronology (Beckerath
1997, pp. 119-123, 136-138, 189).
Ahmose captured Avaris in the teenth or the eighteenth year of his reign: Bietak 1999, p. 48. For the rent debate on the date of these
coes: Niemeier and Niemeier 1998, pp. 85-88.
36. Bietak 1995a, pp. 20-23: one
group of fragments is dated to the late Hyksos period, a second group to the early Eighteenth Dynasty.
Dynasty, ruled from 1648/1645 to 1539/1536 B.C.,37 SO a date for the coes in the Hyksos period would affirm these paintings as contemporaries, more or less, of the fresco groups already mentioned. An early New dom date, however, would place them later than the Alalakh VII and Tel Kabri frescoes, and contemporary with the Akrotiri and later First Phase Cretan frescoes, only if one espoused a late date for the eruption ofThera. The dating has important implications for Aegean art and for eastern terranean history,38 so further elucidation is eagerly awaited from the cavators of Tell el-Dab'a.39
In conclusion, then, the adoption of figural imagery is a Cretan and probably even a Knossian phenomenon, because of the dominance of the
palace at Knossos in the archaeological record of Neopalatial Crete,
cause the earliest examples of mural decoration with pictorial imagery come from Knossos, and because of the long-lasting importance of Knossos as a findspot for surviving mural fragments with pictorial imagery until the final destruction of the palace. It is difficult to envisage nonCretan niences as centers for fresco innovation: it is the larger art world of Crete in the Proto- and Neopalatial periods, with artworks in a variety of media, that provides the stylistic home for this family of wall paintings. Despite its well-preserved repertoire of early murals, Akrotiri (Thera), for example, would seem the recipient of Minoan artistic influence, not the reverse.40
Wall paintings themselves were not new in Neopalatial Crete. The
covering of walls in plaster and then painting them, with solid colors or bands, can be traced back to the EM period.41 Indeed the true fresco nique, painting on wet plaster, may have been already practiced in palatial times.42 That the figural images of Neopalatial wall paintings show certain artistic conventions already seen in the pictorial art of the Near East and Egypt43 might suggest a sudden inspiring contact with these tures at the beginning of the Neopalatial era. But contacts between Crete and the cultures of the eastern and southeastern Mediterranean had been well established for centuries.44 Minoan artists had ample opportunity to
37. Beckerath 1997, pp. 136, 189.
For the history and archaeology of the
Hyksos period, see Oren 1997.
38. As, e.g., Morgan (1995) and the
papers in Bietak 1995b attest; see also note 25.
39. For a commentary on the dating controversy, see Cline 1998; Niemeier
and Niemeier 1998, pp. 85-88; ning 1999, pp. 80-107.
40. See note 21. Morgan (1988),
in her study of the iconography of the paintings from the West House, tiri, frames this problem in a different way. Instead of making the evaluation of Minoan influence on Theran art an
important aim of her work, with the risk of labeling Thera either as a noan dependent or derivative, or as a
center of innovation, she accords Thera a certain autonomy in the larger art world of the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean. The emotional stakes of"who dominated whom" are thus removed.
An additional aspect to consider
would be the implications of the mestic or private context of the coes from Akrotiri as compared with the varied contexts of First Phase wall paintings on Crete: palatial, villas, official, private (see Morris 1999).
41. Immerwahr 1990, pp. 11-37;
and, with valuable comments esp. on wall painting at Phaistos, Militello 1998b.
42. Cameron, Jones, and Philippakis
1977; Immerwahr (1990, pp. 14-16)
highlights the variety of techniques that can be grouped under the heading "fresco."
43. Such as the profile head, one frontal eye, frontal torso, profile legs, and dark skin for men, light skin for
women. See Hood 1978, pp. 83-87,
for a discussion of the techniques of painting; and Immerwahr 1990, pp. 50-54, but stressing Minoan ferences from Egyptian practices; and Poursat 1999, p. 186. For a recent mary of Egyptian conventions for drawing the human body, see Robins
1997, pp. 19-24.
44. For a full account of contacts between Crete and Egypt, see Warren
1995 and several papers in Cline and
absorb the conventions of Near Eastern and Egyptian pictorial imagery, had they or their patrons so wished.
The explanation for the appearance offigural imagery in the Knossian wall paintings therefore lies not in a new technical or iconographical spiration coming from existing neighboring prototypes, but from some
newly arising situation on Crete itself that allowed Minoans to refresh
their vision and appropriate certain conventions, themes, and techniques from their neighbors, and to integrate them into their own art tradition continuing from the Protopalatial period.
Explanations proposed as to why the Minoans suddenly adopted ural imagery have been based on the mural iconography itself, on tion gleaned from the findspots,45 and on the presumed function of the frescoes. The nature of the explanations has varied according to the way the questions have been expressed, and as one might expect, this has evolved during the course of the past century. Such pioneers in the study ofAegean painting as A. J. Evans and Mary Swindler did not ask such questions at all; they aimed to chronicle and characterize.46 If we leap forward to 1990, we see that Sara Immerwahr, herself a student of Swindler, does raise the question in Aegean Painting in the BronzeAge.47 For her, as indeed for many
students of Minoan art, the answer lies in examining the antecedents,
the preexisting art world out of which emerged the pictorial imagery of murals.48
On Crete itself, the appropriately complex designs and images of
Protopalatial art belonged to pottery, notably to the Kamares style, and to sealstones. Motifs and stylistic propensities can be tracked. Outside Crete, Egyptian art, especially, lay ready with its particular stylistic conventions and techniques. But how did the Minoans get from the small-scale images of pottery and seals to wall paintings? How and why did they absorb, gest, and reformulate Egyptian representational art?49 There is no period
of experimentation, no archaic era. It happened suddenly. In the end
Immerwahr could not understand how the ingredients, as she identified them, mixed, fermented, and metamorphosed into something new.50 She did not invoke a Minoan Kunstwollen, for which we can be thankful, but nonetheless, the dynamics of art change eluded her. Immerwahr is hardly alone; others have remained equally puzzled.51
A more fruitful path may lie in another direction, a consideration of function.52 A desire to identify an organized pictorial program on the walls
of the palace at Knossos has characterized the work of several scholars;
this interest focuses attention on the function of the paintings. The mentary nature of the evidence, however, and the chronological spread of the fragments over the entire Neopalatial period, through LM IIIA, make it difficult to determine the existence of a program, not to mention fications to that program over the many decades. Let us examine some of these views, nonetheless, for they represent the opinions of several tive students of Minoan wall painting.
Mark Cameron, in his unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, attacked the
problem head-on in his chapter III, "The Rise of Naturalism in Wall ing."53 Written in 1975, the chapter can still serve as an excellent ment of the question at hand. Cameron proposes that foreign influence was crucial, even if filtered through Minoan aesthetics. The precedent of
45. A thorough documentation of
the contexts of Aegean murals is being undertaken by Fritz Blakolmer and Stefan Hiller. See Blakolmer 1995.
46. Evans discussed First Phase frescoes from Knossos in PM I,
pp. 524-551, and PM III, pp. 29-106. For Swindler on Minoan painting, see Swindler 1929, pp. 71, 73, 76-78, 88.
47. Immerwahr 1990, pp. 21-62.
48. A standard approach, even for those who do not specifically raise the
question of"why?": e.g., Matz 1962, pp. 111-122; Hood 1978, pp. 47-87, esp. pp. 47-48; Poursat 1999, pp. 187; Walberg 1986; Blakolmer 1999.
49. Immerwahr sees Egyptian
influence as important, especially for certain techniques and artistic ventions, including the adoption of large-scale figures (Immerwahr 1990, pp. 53-62), but notes many differences
between Egyptian and Minoan art (pp. 159-161). Although Egyptian art
may have been a "catalyst," Minoan artists were not mere copiers but charted their own path.
50. Immerwahr 1990, p. 62. 51. For example, Oliver Dickinson
(1994, p. 164): "at present the origins of Minoan figured frescoes remain unclear."
52. Immerwahr does not specifically address the question of the function of Minoan murals.
53. Cameron 1975, pp. 31-47. A
copy of the dissertation is kept in the library of the British School at Athens.
mural decoration in other cultures with their established techniques and artistic conventions would be important. Affinities with Egyptian art in particular are documented, but these aspects are reflected in the "outward appearances," not with the "symbolic content." But certain local Cretan artistic developments were also significant factors leading to the adoption of figural imagery in mural decoration. The developing Minoan tradition of fresco decoration and the increasing pictorialism and naturalism in other Minoan arts, all with continuity from the Protopalatial period, and certain cultural and religious influences, played key roles.
As for the function of the wall paintings, Cameron sees them as pressions of religious belief: "To transfer religious representations from the restricted and more private surfaces of gems, pottery, figurines and the like to the large expanses of house and palace walls would in the minds of
the Minoans, as to people of most religious persuasions today, sanctify
their buildings in addition to any ritual of consecration."54 Cameron notes that the introduction of wall paintings with religious themes into palace and house coincides with the apparent decline of worship in peak aries (cult centers on hilltops),55 and the religious themes of the mural paintings are then analyzed in detail.56 That these paintings presented a thematically unified program depicting a great goddess and the festival of her fertility, the mythological underpinnings and the festival rituals, was a conclusion that Cameron reaffirmed in a paper delivered in 1984 not long before his death.57 This unified theme had a long life that extended through the Neopalatial period even into the era of Mycenaean domination.58 sidering the fragmentary nature of the Knossos frescoes and the versies surrounding their findspots, contexts, and chronology, we must note
that the claims are sweeping, but Cameron's detailed knowledge of the
material commands authority.
Robin Hagg, in a paper delivered in 1983,59 does not address the
lem of the adoption of figural imagery in Minoan murals, but he does investigate their function. He agrees with Cameron in emphasizing the religious functions of Minoan wall paintings: images of the goddess, to
secure the divine presence; cult scenes, to give permanence to the ritual; and pictures that guide people in their ritual behavior.60 He notes, ever, that certain images are not religious; indeed, he sounds a more tious note than Cameron, remarking on the difficulties of interpreting such fragmentary material. The identity of the patron of the murals is probed. Any sort of self-advertisement is lacking, such as the hunting or
warfare scenes so popular in Egypt or certain Near Eastern cultures-or
even in the Mycenaean world, where the ruler does not specifically appear in pictorial art.61 (Also missing, we can note, are other staples of ancient
54. Cameron 1975, p. 39. chap. V, "Interpretation of the Themes 61. Hagg 1985, pp. 214-217. On
55. Cameron 1975, p. 657. Al- of the Paintings." the ruler in the Bronze Age Aegean,
though much study of peak sanctuaries 57. Cameron 1987. see the papers in Rehak 1995; on the
has been done since Cameron wrote, 58. Cameron 1987, pp. 321, 324. absence of the ruler in Aegean art, see, this statement remains valid. See For another approach to the religious in the same volume, Davis 1995; and
Cherry 1986, pp. 29-32 (with refer- significance of the palace at Knossos, on the lack of war imagery in Minoan ences to his earlier work); Peatfield but one that would have fascinated art, see Gates 1999. That the bull was
1994 (with references to his earlier Cameron, see Soles 1995. used as a symbol of Knossian power has
work); Nowicki 1994; Watrous 1995. 59. Hagg 1985. been proposed by B. and E. Hallager
56. Cameron 1975, pp. 127-201: 60. Hagg 1985, p. 214. (1995).
Near Eastern iconography: images of rulers appearing together with vinities, such as to receive a blessing or divine commission,62 or any rial record of pious deeds.)63 Such absences lead Hagg to surmise that the patron may not have been an individual with the power to self-aggrandize, but a collective group, such as "a board of priests or religious officials."64
A different direction concerning the function of certain murals has been taken by Anne Chapin.65 In her analysis of the Floral Fresco from
the Unexplored Mansion at Knossos, she proposes that such landscape scenes may have been lavish luxury decorations, displays of wealth and
power, even if the origins of the subject matter may have been religious.66 She draws a parallel with wall paintings that decorated the private homes
of the wealthy in Renaissance Italy, and indeed refers to a Minoan
Neopalatial renaissance, lasting perhaps only through LM IA.67 This posal contrasts with the religious motivations noted above, and certainly, as Chapin states, forces us to consider the possibility of motivations more complex and multifaceted than heretofore suspected.
Explanations have thus focused on a supposed religious function for the murals in the Knossos palace, reinforced by the overall character of the palace as a religious center.68 Murals as luxurious, pleasure-giving tions69 may apply to certain examples from villas, as Chapin has proposed, images that advertised the prosperity and status of an elite class, pictures
inspired perhaps by examples in the palace itself and by Egyptian and
Near Eastern practice.70
These analyses of the functions of Knossian wall paintings, menting the discussions of stylistic origins as presented earlier, contribute important insights with regard to the purpose of this art form in Neopalatial Crete. Yet we still have not answered our primary question, why did
rial imagery appear at this time? Having examined style and function,
though, we are now ready to examine one last aspect. What was the larger social or political context in which such wall paintings became a desired art form? An exploration of this, combined with what we have learned about style and function, should lead to an explanation of the appearance of pictorial imagery in Minoan murals.71 But defining political context in early Neopalatial Crete, still essentially a prehistoric society with poorly understood texts, depends on interpretation of the archaeological record.
Before examining that record, however, let us first broaden our spectives by investigating the causes of mural painting in other places and times. Lessons learned might illuminate our understanding of the origins of pictorial imagery in Minoan murals. It is worth noting that the painting of walls with pictorial imagery is by no means a universal habit. In the art traditions of the larger Near Eastern/Mediterranean/European world, to take one region as an example, mural paintings are popular in certain ods but at other times they fall out of fashion. This characteristic of the pictorial fresco, as a distinctive and somewhat unusual artistic vehicle, tifies the search for cross-cultural comparisons when seeking to explain the adoption of pictorial imagery in Neopalatial Minoan wall paintings.72
I would like to introduce three particularly instructive cases, one
ian and two Mexican: first, the early Renaissance wall paintings of the
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena; second, murals in the 16th-century Augustinian monastery at Malinalco, Mexico; and third, the program of public mural
62. E.g., the Investiture Scene from
Court 106, the Palace of Zimri-Lim, Mari (Mari, pp. 53-66, figs. 47-48, and pls. A, VII-XIV). Symbols of
divine authority as seen in Ancient Near Eastern art may, however, be present in Minoan art, even if the divinity and the ruler are not shown together: Krattenmaker 1995.
63. E.g., Gudea the Architect, a statue of Gudea seated with the plan, placed on his lap, of the temple he built at the behest of the god Ningirsu (Gates
1993, p. 16, nos. 15, 16). 64. Hagg 1985, p. 216. 65. Chapin 1997. 66. Chapin 1997, pp. 22-24. 67. Chapin 1997, pp. 23-24. 68. Soles 1995.
69. For a selection of modern
examples, see Cass 1988.
70. For the controversial subject of the function of Minoan villas, see
Walberg 1994 and the papers in Hagg
1997.
71. These questions have been
posed, if not answered, by Blakolmer
(1997, p. 104).
72. On the use of analogy for the interpretation of archaeological
mains: Orme 1981, Wylie 1985, Stahl
1993. For two recent discussions of aspects of Minoan civilization that depend on the interpretative help of analogy, see Betancourt 1999 and esp.
paintings that burst on the scene in Mexico in the 1920s. My criteria for selecting these comparanda were three, all aspects either demonstrated or postulated for early Neopalatial frescoes. First, any swift flowering of ral painting deserved consideration. Second, keeping in mind the religious
function proposed for many Minoan wall paintings and the seemingly
official and aristocratic locations of these murals in palatial (Knossos) and villa contexts, I looked for comparable situations in which religion mixed with the official. Lastly, murals with a clear political connection, with or without a religious dimension, merited investigation. Each case presented here displays two of these three criteria.
THE FRESCOES OF THE PALAZZO PUBBLICO,
SIENA
73. Waley 1988, pp. 107-111. 74. Lowden 1997, pp. 371-379. 75. White 1987, pp. 143-145. 76. White 1987, pp. 227-229.
The Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, built in 1299-1311 as the meeting place
for the Council of Nine that ruled the city, offers an early example of Italian Renaissance wall paintings in a secular context. The construction
of the Palazzo Pubblico did not represent a sudden, dramatic change in
the political life of the city, but the monumental architectural expression of the solidity and stability of the city's government, evolving, as was true with many other city-states of northern and central Italy, over the previous 200 years.73 For our purposes, the interesting aspect of this case is the combination of religious and secular subjects chosen for the decoration of this official setting, the seat of government. This combination was indeed something new.
The previous (13th) century had seen the increasing popularity of coes of religious subjects painted in religious settings. The Byzantine style, the maniera greca, of these paintings, and indeed their placement on tered walls in churches, betray the models offered by eastern Christianity. The influence of a foreign art tradition is strong: but why strong in the 13th century, when the Italians certainly had known Byzantine art for
centuries? No doubt the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 during the
Fourth Crusade and the loot brought back to Italy allowed a wider ence to admire the artistic production of the great city;74 moreover, the Latins retained control of Constantinople and other portions of the tine empire until 1261, allowing further familiarity with its architecture and art. Byzantine power was waning, yet its artistic influence remained strong.
Other factors that influenced the rise of wall paintings especially in churches included increased wealth, derived from banking activities in the case of Tuscany; the desire to spend that wealth on church decoration in order to expiate sins of usury and to promote civic pride; and the political stability that followed the victory of the papacy in its long struggle with the Holy Roman Empire.75 This last would lead to Rome's resurgence as an art center, with the pope, already the spiritual leader of western tianity, emerging as a major secular ruler.
The wall paintings that decorated Siena's Palazzo Pubblico extended
this artistic practice to a secular setting.76 Unlike church decoration,
images; if not planned as a thematically unified program,77 the paintings, executed over several decades, do seem to echo a similar theme, one that stresses the prestige and importance of the city's governing body. In the Sala del Mappamondo, the council chamber, Simone Martini painted eral scenes at different times. The Maesta of ca. 1315-1316, with tant repainting in 1321, shows Mary and the infant Jesus seated in dor in the center of a saintly gathering, including four patron saints of Siena who surrender the city to her.78 Mary is here on the wall of the council chamber not only as the queen of heaven, but also as a symbolic earthly ruler administering justice.79 Her presence strengthened the hand
of the Council of Nine, the oligarchs who aimed to suppress damaging
family feuds as they ruled correctly. Opposite the Maesta, Simone Martini, it is generally thought, painted in 1328 a quite different subject: the eral Guidoriccio da Fogliano on horseback, riding between cities.80 The age of this successful general commemorates the military successes of Siena, another achievement that the city government was happy to celebrate in a public wall painting.
Elsewhere in the building, in the Sala de'Nove, Ambrogio Lorenzetti's painting of the Allegories of Good Government and Tyranny (1338-1339) covers three walls (the fourth consists of windows), a secular painting whose message again supports the mission of the governing Nine: with their ership comes prosperity.81
These paintings of the Palazzo Pubblico show that secular allegories
were valued in early-14th-century Italy in government centers. They sult from a change in the political and economic conditions: political and military stability after a period of conflict, and increasing prosperity. They express the mission of the ruling body of the city, with an implied warning of disasters that might arise should their authority not be respected. portantly, the divine in the form of the Virgin Mary is invoked as key support. And frescoes were permanent; they could not be removed easily or replaced, like tapestries or panel paintings. They could be only painted over or hacked off.82
THE MURALS IN THE AUGUSTINIAN
MONASTERY AT MALINALCO, MEXICO
The second case I would like to examine is from 16th-century Mexico.
Mendicant orders of the conquering Spanish, notably the Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans, built fortresslike churches and monasteries
and decorated them with wall paintings. The occasion allowing the
ation of the murals was the huge political, social, and religious change that
followed the Spanish conquest; the specific impetus was ideological
pression. The subjects of these paintings are religious, but interestingly they include gardens-a combination that recalls the scenes of ritual and nature much liked by the Minoans.83 Most of these murals were covered with whitewash in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the result of changing art fashions and, more importantly, the decline in the prestige of the mendicant orders.
77. Martindale 1988, p. 14. 78. Martindale 1988, pp. 14-17, 204-209; Hoeniger 1995, pp. 128-135.
79. White 1987, p. 349; Hoeniger 1995, pp. 128-130. For the Virgin
Mary and other women used as bols of political entities, see Dubisch
1995,pp.229-249.
80. White 1987, pp. 354-356; the
painting could possibly be of the later 14th century, by another artist. For this and paintings of cities controlled by Siena that decorated the room, see
Martindale 1988, pp. 40-44,210-211;
he dates Guidoriccio da Fogliano to the early 1330s.
81. White 1987, pp. 388-397.
82. A fate that in fact befell amples from my next two cases: the Malinalco murals were covered with whitewash, and a mural painted by Diego Rivera in 1933 for Rockefeller Center, New York, was deliberately destroyed on the orders of the patron, John D. Rockefeller Jr., angered by
Rivera's refusal to remove a portrait of
Lenin.
83. Immerwahr 1990, pp. 40-50;
84. Peterson 1993, p. 3.
85. Peterson 1993, pp. 164, 178.
86. Peterson 1993, p. ix.
87. Peterson 1993, pp. 158-164,
and passim for the garden paintings in the lower cloister.
88. Peterson 1993, pp. 29-56. 89. Peterson 1993, pp. 57-82. 90. Peterson 1993, pp. 83-123. 91 Peterson 1993, pp. 132-135.
The instructive case from Mexico is explained and analyzed by J. F.
Peterson in her 1993 study of the mural paintings in the Augustinian monastery at Malinalco, southwest of Mexico City. The monastery was
founded in 1540, with the buildings begun some twenty years later.84 The
paintings were executed during the 1570s and possibly the early 1580s,
only to be whitewashed soon thereafter.85 Restorations in 1974-1975 and
1983-1984 liberated the paintings from their centuries-old whitewash
covering.86 The paintings decorate the entry, the church, the inner walls of a two-storied cloister, and the stairwell leading to the upper floor of the cloister. Subjects include portraits of two of the first Augustinian friars to arrive in Mexico in 1533 (in the arcaded entryway, or porteria); garden
images, with plants, animals, and birds (in the church, although much
damaged, and on the inner walls and barrel vaulting of the lower cloister); pelicans, symbols of self-sacrifice (in the stairwell); and Christ's Passion (in the upper cloister).87
The purposes of these murals were various. Instruction was one goal, spiritual inspiration another. The mendicant orders, supported by the Pope and the Spanish crown, were charged with the conversion to Christianity and the Hispanicization of the Indians. Bolstered by the humanistic ideals
of Erasmus and Thomas More, the friars hoped to find a people
rupted, in contrast with Europeans, ready to recreate the spirit of earliest Christianity. This idealistic aim combined with the widespread belief that
the Garden of Eden was located in these newly discovered, supposedly
eastern lands, the Indies. The garden murals, in particular, expressed this vision of a terrestrial paradise, with the echo that such would await the
faithful believer upon his or her death. This lower cloister would have
been accessible to professed Christians, primarily those working at the monastery and those receiving education. In the private area of the upper cloister, reserved for the friars, the paintings served their spiritual needs for moral support (the self-sacrificing pelican depicted in the stairwell) and for objects of devotion (the Passion scenes).
The artisans of these paintings were Indians, but working under the direction of the friars.88 Although the iconography of the garden murals depended largely on European models-16th-century Spanish murals, estries, and the varied European graphic and other portable artworks
culating in early colonial Mexico89-the Indian artisans introduced
merous plants and animals familiar from their own world. The choice of such plants was distinctive: rare are food plants; well represented are the
prestigious decorative and aromatic flowers and medicinal plants that
stocked the gardens of the Aztec royalty.90 Moreover, a lush, well-watered garden corresponded with Aztec notions of the two desirable places one might go after death, Tlalocan and a heaven associated with the House of the Sun, and it recalled Tomoanchan, the beautiful, happy place where the gods and mankind originated.91 The garden imagery of the lower cloister and apparently the church thus suited nicely both European and panic traditions of the rewards that those who believed and obeyed could anticipate after death.
In the late 16th century, the mendicant orders lost their influence
conquest. The Counter-Reformation quashed humanistic thought. ism and heresy were feared; native artisans were excluded from the ing of religious subjects, and Indians were never encouraged to enter the
priesthood. The utopian aspirations of the mendicants were revealed as
unattainable; the Indians themselves proved just as humanly imperfect as the Europeans. Further, the secular clergy-parish priests and the pacy-increased in numbers and influence. Even though the pope and the
Spanish crown continued to support the mendicants, funding now
pended on upholding papal and regal policies. At the same time fashions in religious art were changing; a new preference for easel paintings and retables made wall paintings appear antiquated. In this new political, gious, and artistic climate, mural paintings no longer seemed appropriate. Indeed, the Malinalco frescoes were covered with whitewash not long ter completion, to be cleaned and revealed only in the 20th century.
THE MEXICAN MURAL MOVEMENT
IN THE 1920s
The third case is that of the Mexican mural movement that began in the early 1920s and lasted until the early 1970s.92 Here, too, the wall paintings resulted from political change, in this case a violent internal revolution. Moreover, these paintings were very much a public art, with official ernmental support; many public buildings were decorated with mural ings. Unlike the previous two cases, however, the subjects illustrated were not religious but cultural, historical, and political, subjects that reflected the particular ideological tenor of the new regime.93
The movement originated in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917
that followed the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. One tenet of the lution was protest against the academic, European-oriented painting styles favored by the Diaz government. The painter Gerardo Murillo, known as Dr. Atl, promoted an art that would be more specifically Mexican in ject matter, accessible to the public, and filled with spiritual qualities and energy that were lacking in academic painting.94 On travels in Europe he
was impressed by Italian Renaissance frescoes, as would be in turn the younger painters Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. The Italian
murals displayed the powerful inner qualities for which he was searching; they served as an inspiration for his new movement. He believed that walls of public buildings would be an appropriate location for such paintings. Murals could have an influential role in society.
Although he took sides in the struggles in the 1910s, Dr. Atl did not consider that mural paintings necessarily needed to depict revolutionary subject matter. His disciples, however, had other ideas. Siqueiros, while in Barcelona in 1921, issued a manifesto on behalf of an artists' trade union, the Syndicate of Technical Workers and Sculptors.95 Like Dr. Atl, he pudiated any art that was elitist, that appealed to intellectual and upper classes. Art should benefit the public, and should educate people at this
time of transition to a new social order. Monumental art was best sitioned to achieve these goals. Italian Renaissance frescoes, although
92. Rochfort 1993, Folgarait 1998.
93. Including "conflicting voices" within the movement: Folgarait 1998, p. 12.
94. Rochfort 1993, pp. 14-20.
religious in subject matter, showed how monumental paintings could fectively transmit philosophical concepts and political ideologies.96 Jose Clemente Orozco, another major Mexican muralist, thought similarly. "The highest, the most logical, the purest form of painting is the mural," he wrote in 1929. "It is, too, the most disinterested form, for it cannot be made a matter of private gain: it cannot be hidden away for the benefit of a certain privileged few. It is for the people. It is for ALL."97
Such an art would have to be a state art, and as such would need a
well-placed sponsor. The resources of Dr. Atl and his followers would not suffice to launch mural painting on a scale sufficiently grand to make the
public impact they wished. The Mexican mural movement indeed had
such a sponsor. Jose Vasconcelos, the Secretary of State for Public
tion in the government of Alvaro Obreg6n (1921-1924), commissioned
the first series of mural paintings on public buildings.98 The policy was not universally popular, especially with architects. But Vasconcelos, a pher and idealist, believed in the power of art to better the human tion. For him, monumental murals painted by first-rate artists would achieve this end far better than small-scale art, however high its quality. Political content was not a concern; he did not require certain subjects or ments from his artists. In contrast, Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, all of
whom painted commissions arranged by Vasconcelos, would view their
murals as vehicles for their strongly felt, highly politicized leftist-oriented critiques of Mexican and American society and history.99
The Mexican mural movement thus arose from political upheaval (the Revolution) and ideological reorientation (from Spanish-European elitism to a broader-based pro-Mexican outlook), with its launching
arranged by a sympathetic intellectual in a powerful government tion at the appropriate moment. Note that the murals themselves did not
cause or bring about political change; instead, with the violence of the
1910s now over, the paintings could express the spirit of the Revolution in a way that did not threaten the authority of the governments of the 1920s and beyond.100 For the form itself, the mural, foreign influence was determinant: Italian Renaissance frescoes. The impact of pre-Columbian wall paintings, fragmentary and as yet poorly known, was limited in the early 1920s.
PICTORIAL IMAGERY IN MINOAN MURALS: A PRODUCT OF SOCIOPOLITICAL AND
IDEOLOGICAL CHANGE
It is natural that the State should be a partisan of an artistic form that
96. Rochfort 1993, p. 29. would be useful for its political ends.
97. Rochfort 1993, p. 8. 1
98. Rochfort 1993, pp. 2-21; --Luis Cardoza y Arag6n?01
98. Rochfort 1993, pp. 20-21;
Folgarait 1998, pp. 16-20. All three groups of murals presented above represent a pictorial expres-
99. See also Hurlburt 1989.100. ee Folgarait 1998, 197-199. sion, permanently fixed on walls, of a newly arrived political order, whether 100. Folgarait 1998, pp. 197-199.
101. Art critic L. Cardoza y Arag6n, from peaceful internal political evolution, violent internal political change, La nubey el reloj, p. 18, Mexico City or external conquest. The iconography is didactic to varying degrees of 1940, cited by Folgarait (1998, p. 199). rectness or indirectness, but certainly expresses in each case the metaphysical
underpinnings of the new order. The lessons learned from these three
cases can be applied with profit to the Minoan murals, by directing our
search for cultural context to the sociopolitical and ideological changes
that took place on the island at the transition from the Protopalatial to the
Neopalatial period.
Despite unquestionable cultural continuity on Crete from the palatial period, the Neopalatial period does witness important changes in the archaeological record. These differences strongly suggest changes in
the political organization on the island, notably the decline of regional
power in favor of dominance by Knossos.102 This centralization of ity is deduced from several features of the archaeological record. First, the palace centers at Mallia and Phaistos diminish in size in comparison with the palace at Knossos. Second, pottery types associated with Knossos nate by LM IA, in contrast with the marked regional styles of the palatial period.103
Third, the network of villas, found in both urban centers such as Knossos and in towns and villages, marks the spread of centralized
thority in the Neopalatial period. Even if the origins of the villa may lie earlier,104 the number of villas increased sharply in LM I. The villas are not identical designs but variants on a theme,105 and no doubt served a variety of functions that might have ranged from houses of the ruling families, such as those at Knossos itself, to manor houses in the countryside from which regional economic, religious, and social control was exercised.106
On a contrasting note, certain administrative tools of the Neopalatial
period, notably sealing practices and the Linear A script, do not have a
uniform character, but show variations from place to place. In these ters, it might be explained, if the general concept of sealings and writing were imposed from a center, details could be left to local preference.107
Other changes that point to a centralization of authority are seen in the organization of cult and the network of regional forts and
tions. In Protopalatial times, peak sanctuaries were widespread. In the Neopalatial period, most were abandoned. Those still in use served ace centers and major settlements, especially Knossos, an inference drawn from the correspondence of finds from Neopalatial centers and
the sanctuaries.108 Cave sanctuaries and rural sanctuaries such as at Syme 102. Treuil et al. 1989, pp.
308; Knappett 1999, pp. 637-638; Schoep 1999, pp. 201-202, 217-221 (see note 107 below). For a struction of the evidence, see Cherry 1986, pp. 25-26; his conclusion is not convincing, however. A more tentative view is expressed by ney (1995) and by Driessen and Macdonald in their useful summary of changes from Protopalatial to early Neopalatial Crete (1997, pp. 11-13).
103. Betancourt 1985, pp. 64-133,
esp. p. 115. For the transitional MM III
period: Stiirmer 1992 and Walberg
1992.
104. Treuil et al. 1989, pp. 233-234, 306; Niemeier 1997.
105. Betancourt and Marinatos
1997, pp. 91-92; Preziosi and cock 1999, p. 110.
106. Hagg 1997: this collection of
papers is fundamental; and Walberg
1994.
107. Schoep 1994 (regional
ations of script are interpreted as evidence in favor of regional political
centers in the Neopalatial period);
Driessen and Schoep 1995, pp.
662 (local administrations with a certain autonomy of practice, but under a central authority); and Schoep
1999, esp. pp. 201-202 and 217-221
(in a more nuanced interpretation, she now sees likely Knossian control in LM IA, with a reversion to
alism in LM IB).
108. Cherry 1986, pp. 29-32; field 1987; 1990; 1994, pp. 19-28;
also show connections with Neopalatial centers.109 Similarly, the oration of Room 14 at Ayia Triada with wall paintings of religious
subjects may reflect the Knossian imposition of its cult practices in ern Crete.11l At Knossos itself, an increase of cult space enclosed within the palace suggests greater attention paid to rituals and, with access more
restricted than in Protopalatial times, a greater prestige accorded to
them.11 Among these rituals, a new importance may have been given to dance.112
The Neopalatial period is a period without fortified sites, a contrast
with the previous Protopalatial era and indeed the later Postpalatial
riod.ll3 Whatever the causes of the widespread destructions of sites at the end of the Protopalatial era, whether earthquake, violent attacks, and/or economic and social dislocation,114 evidence from the ensuing Neopalatial period indicates a change, a period of internal calm. This absence of fied sites in the Neopalatial period suggests a lack of armed conflict on the island itself and thus internal political harmony, most likely the result of centralized authority rather than a network of independent city-states how free of violent rivalries. Later Greeks, notablyThucydides (1.4), wrote of a Minoan thalassocracy, and indeed some scholars have proposed Minoan control over the southern Aegean during this period, from the Greek insula across the southern Aegean islands to the southwest coast of Asia Minor.115 The existence of a king, named Minos in later Greek sources, may be an anachronism, for there is no confirmation of this in the chaeological record.
As noted earlier, the iconography of Minoan art is not that of cratic kingship, at least not of the sort typical in Egyptian and ancient Near Eastern civilizations.11 The type of government in the Neopalatial period is more likely to have been an oligarchy with a theocratic tion, with no one person or family needing a push from personalized nography and objects, but one in which several families may well have had
a controlling interest-an elite centered at Knossos. This is the picture proposed by Cameron, Hagg, and Chapin based on their analyses of the
function of the murals; others, too, have found this to be the most able hypothesis that explains the available evidence.17
What role does pictorial imagery in wall paintings have in all this?
Pictures, after all, communicate messages; "images must have an effect on 109. Peatfield 1994, pp. 26-28.
110. Rehak 1997; Militello 1998a, pp. 99-132,250-282 (the paintings of Room 14), and 352-353 sions).
111. Gesell 1985, pp. 19-40 (the Neopalatial period throughout Crete); 1987; Moody 1987. On the
tance of the palace at Knossos as a cult center, see also Marinatos 1993, esp. pp. 38-75; and, for its likely
cosmological significance, Soles 1995.
For a summary of religious changes
at this time: Betancourt 1999, p. 222. 112. German 1999.
113. The evidence is discussed in several papers in Laffineur 1999, in
particular Chryssoulaki 1999, Nowicki 1999, Schlager 1999, Tsipopoulou 1999.
114. Godart 1999.
115. On the Minoan
cracy: papers in Hagg and Marinatos 1984; Wiener 1990; and, within a
larger discussion of trade and
connections, Rehak and Younger
1998, pp. 134-141. The nature of the
relationship between Thera and Crete in the early Neopalatial period is cussed in several papers cited above,
note 21.
116. Gates 1999.
117. Betancourt and Marinatos
1997, pp. 92-97; Marinatos 1993, pp. 243-244. Also arguing for an
oligarchy, but emphasizing its tile rather than religious interests, is
us.)118 The pictures, as we have seen, mostly of religious ritual, religious emblems, or nature, do not directly illustrate the governmental system.
Instead, as shown by the examples from early Renaissance Siena, early
Spanish colonial Malinalco, and 20th-century revolutionary Mexico, they serve to enhance and honor, in a pictorial way, the metaphysical basis of the state and the society, namely, in Neopalatial Crete, the primacy of the religious. The sudden arrival of pictorial imagery on Crete, then, is a torial act that builds upon the stylistic precedents of Protopalatial art and takes advantage of large-scale Egyptian and Near Eastern figural imagery already well known to the Minoans. These elements coalesce now because
of the need or desirability of such imagery in an evolved sociopolitical
framework of newly centralized authority for which the veneration of ture and the importance of religious ritual have become its metaphysical foundation. The comparativist outlook espoused in this paper has the merit
of encouraging us to move beyond a restricted, Aegeo-centric range of
explanations and imagine more complex sociopolitical and ideological texts in which figural imagery fulfilled particular needs.
118. Bakewell 1998: a discussion of images as actions, parallel to words
as actions-"image acts" and "speech
acts." On the particular effects of mural paintings with specific reference to 20th-century Mexican examples,
see Folgarait 1998, esp. pp. 27-32, 191-203.
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