DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42779#0068
38 PREHISTORIC PERIODS
Figures in steatite, on the other hand^ were apparently
never left with their natural surface. Some were covered
with gold-leaf, others painted with a thin coating of gesso.1
The painted stucco head from Mycenae (see Fig. 16) may
be a version in cheap material of a head that normally would
have been rendered in steatite covered with gesso. It may
also, as Sir Arthur Evans suggests, reflect the influence of
contemporary wooden statues of large size.
Figures in bronze were invariably cast solid and the Cretans
had no knowledge at all of the cire-perdue process, nor, as
far as we know, of the technique of beaten bronze. Nor
did they finish their cast figures with the chisel or burin.
Cretan bronzework, in fact, lags far behind Cretan stone-
work in technique. While the casting was, as in the case of
the bull-jumper, elaborate and difficult, the process began
and ended with the casting.
That Cretan statues of great size in wood, with bronze
additions, were made for ritual use is now clearly established.
This conclusion is of the greatest importance as showing that
still another mode of art survived from prehistoric to classical
times.
The survival of tools used in stone-craft is dubious.
Chisels, awls, and punches are common on Minoan sites,
but all may have been for domestic use or solely for employ-
ment in carpentry. The chisels in particular are rarely strong
enough in fabric to have been used for primary or major
work on stone, and the punches would have bent under a
few strokes, so slight are they in build. The few saws that
have been found are almost certainly wood-saws or meat-
saws. The only surviving instance of a mason’s saw is that
found by Petrie (p. 28). Copper and bronze was too
valuable to waste on stone-cutting when similar tools of
emery or similar processes in which emery powder or teeth
of emery on a metal blade were used were possible and avail-
1 Evans, Palace of Minos, iii. 427.
Figures in steatite, on the other hand^ were apparently
never left with their natural surface. Some were covered
with gold-leaf, others painted with a thin coating of gesso.1
The painted stucco head from Mycenae (see Fig. 16) may
be a version in cheap material of a head that normally would
have been rendered in steatite covered with gesso. It may
also, as Sir Arthur Evans suggests, reflect the influence of
contemporary wooden statues of large size.
Figures in bronze were invariably cast solid and the Cretans
had no knowledge at all of the cire-perdue process, nor, as
far as we know, of the technique of beaten bronze. Nor
did they finish their cast figures with the chisel or burin.
Cretan bronzework, in fact, lags far behind Cretan stone-
work in technique. While the casting was, as in the case of
the bull-jumper, elaborate and difficult, the process began
and ended with the casting.
That Cretan statues of great size in wood, with bronze
additions, were made for ritual use is now clearly established.
This conclusion is of the greatest importance as showing that
still another mode of art survived from prehistoric to classical
times.
The survival of tools used in stone-craft is dubious.
Chisels, awls, and punches are common on Minoan sites,
but all may have been for domestic use or solely for employ-
ment in carpentry. The chisels in particular are rarely strong
enough in fabric to have been used for primary or major
work on stone, and the punches would have bent under a
few strokes, so slight are they in build. The few saws that
have been found are almost certainly wood-saws or meat-
saws. The only surviving instance of a mason’s saw is that
found by Petrie (p. 28). Copper and bronze was too
valuable to waste on stone-cutting when similar tools of
emery or similar processes in which emery powder or teeth
of emery on a metal blade were used were possible and avail-
1 Evans, Palace of Minos, iii. 427.