DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42779#0065
PREHISTORIC PERIODS 35
sculpture of the Lion Gate led also to the production of
large-scale reliefs mostly in hard stone in the shape of the
grave-stelai from the Shaft-Graves.1 The most complete
and best known of these are unfortunately too weathered to
allow any deductions to be made from a study of their detail.
But there have survived some fragments in soft stone which
are most instructive. These are classed by Mr. Heurtley as
his Class I, which he thinks are the earliest.2 Fragments
Xa and b and Xlb show with perfect clarity that the reliefs
which adorn them were cut quite simply with a knife.
Moreover, the material of which they are made, described
as poros (actually a soft grey limestone), was a stone which
was much softer when fresh from the quarry than after a little
exposure. The curiously barbaric figure on Xa (Fig. 14),
which Mr. Heurtley is tempted to identify as negroid in type
and perhaps in action, looks to me as if it had come from a trial
slab on which sculptors were experimenting. It can hardly
have been part of an actual monument. An exact parallel for
sculptors’ trials of this type is seen in the case of the two
heads found on the Acropolis of Athens, similar in material,
in technique, and in their lack of serious intention.3
Whatever this peculiar monument was intended to be it
must belong to the very close of Mycenaean culture. It may
even be a work of primitive Geometric carving, made in an at-
tempt to emulate the visible stelai of the Mycenaean princes.
But the main importance of these fragments is that they
show that the tradition of soft-stone cutting, fixed long
before in Middle Minoan times, still continued down to the
twelfth century or even later. Soft stone was still cut with a
plain knife-blade, as if it were wood.
1 W. A. Heurtley in B.S.A. xxv, pp. 126 ff.
2 It is much more likely that they are the very latest, contemporary with
the decadent quasi-geometric art of the last phase at Mycenae. There is no
reason at all to think that Mycenaean art in sculpture began crudely and
emerged resplendent. The reverse was the case, for the Mycenaeans had
learned their first lessons from Cretans when the latter were at the height of
their artistic skill.
3 Dickins, Acropolis Museum Catalogue, p. 72.
sculpture of the Lion Gate led also to the production of
large-scale reliefs mostly in hard stone in the shape of the
grave-stelai from the Shaft-Graves.1 The most complete
and best known of these are unfortunately too weathered to
allow any deductions to be made from a study of their detail.
But there have survived some fragments in soft stone which
are most instructive. These are classed by Mr. Heurtley as
his Class I, which he thinks are the earliest.2 Fragments
Xa and b and Xlb show with perfect clarity that the reliefs
which adorn them were cut quite simply with a knife.
Moreover, the material of which they are made, described
as poros (actually a soft grey limestone), was a stone which
was much softer when fresh from the quarry than after a little
exposure. The curiously barbaric figure on Xa (Fig. 14),
which Mr. Heurtley is tempted to identify as negroid in type
and perhaps in action, looks to me as if it had come from a trial
slab on which sculptors were experimenting. It can hardly
have been part of an actual monument. An exact parallel for
sculptors’ trials of this type is seen in the case of the two
heads found on the Acropolis of Athens, similar in material,
in technique, and in their lack of serious intention.3
Whatever this peculiar monument was intended to be it
must belong to the very close of Mycenaean culture. It may
even be a work of primitive Geometric carving, made in an at-
tempt to emulate the visible stelai of the Mycenaean princes.
But the main importance of these fragments is that they
show that the tradition of soft-stone cutting, fixed long
before in Middle Minoan times, still continued down to the
twelfth century or even later. Soft stone was still cut with a
plain knife-blade, as if it were wood.
1 W. A. Heurtley in B.S.A. xxv, pp. 126 ff.
2 It is much more likely that they are the very latest, contemporary with
the decadent quasi-geometric art of the last phase at Mycenae. There is no
reason at all to think that Mycenaean art in sculpture began crudely and
emerged resplendent. The reverse was the case, for the Mycenaeans had
learned their first lessons from Cretans when the latter were at the height of
their artistic skill.
3 Dickins, Acropolis Museum Catalogue, p. 72.