Burrows, Ronald M.: The discoveries in Crete and their bearing on the history of ancient civilisation (London, 1907)

54 MIDDLE MINOAN I

too scanty for us to get any idea of the part the
beetle is meant to play in the procession, and it is
possible that a single vase is insufficient evidence for
attributing naturalism to an age. That there was an
interest in animal life at the time may be inferred from
a curious black glaze vase with red and white stripes,
the shape of which imitates the body, wings, and head
of a dove,1 in a spirit which is beyond the mere love of
the grotesque shown in the corresponding " ox" or
" duck" vases of Phylakopi.2 There is, however, to
our knowledge, no such free painting either of plant or
animal life in Crete till Middle Minoan III. ; while even
here animal life seems to have been reserved for frescoes
and porcelain. The nearest things to it in early art are
the Bull and the Dog on the Neolithic vases of Petreny
in South Russia.'

Have we to do with the eccentricity of an individual
artist ? Or will some yet undiscovered evidence justify
the hypothesis that the conventional designs of the
Kamares polychrome ware of Middle Minoan II. are a
reaction from an all but lost naturalistic phase of the
period that preceded them ? Was the " Palace Style "
of Late Minoan II., following on the great naturalistic
periods,4 proof of a reaction that had already once taken
place in the history of Cretan art ?

1 Hogarth and Welch in J.U.S. xxi. fig. i, p. 79.

2 Edgar in Phylakopi, pp. 88-92, figs. 74, 75, and Plate IV.
Nos. 6, 7, 8.

3 Von Stern, P.K.S.R. 1906. Plates VIII. 3 ; XI. 12b, wrongly
numbered in the text p. 66.

* See below, Chapter VI.