DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.807#0655
M. M. Ill: SURVIVALS OF CERAMIC POLYCHROMY 609
dolphins are here shown as if leaping out of the waters, in a waved space
that opens between spray-wreathed rocks above and a lower zone with
white dots, here perhaps representing a pebbly beach.
The pendant to this is supplied by another jar from the same cemetery
(Fig. 447 d),1 also representing a ' school' of leaping dolphins, in this case,
however, depicted, without the rocks and pebbles, in dark paint, edged with
white, on a warm buff ground. Another Pachyammos jar in the same early
dark on light style shows a cuttle-fish with six tentacles in a style less purely
decorative and geometrical than that reproduced above on a polychrome
vase from the Kamares Cave.2 These vases clearly belong to the later,
transitional phase of M. M. Ill, in which we already have a foretaste of the
prevailing ceramic fashion of the beginning of the Late Minoan Age.
Parallel with these monochrome designs of marine subjects on M. M. Ill Class of
jars, which reflect the greater art of wall-painting, is another group executed Reliefs of
in small relief, of which an example has already been given in the marine AIfme
Subjects.
piece with its life-like reproductions of shells and barnacles.3 The counterpart
of these, as already noted, is to be found in the faience representations of
the ' Flying Fish ' panel.4 Shells in relief seem already to have adorned
certain vessels in the M. M. II Period.
Reliefs of this class, often very finely executed in steatite, had, as will
be shown, a great influence on the vase paintings of the finest L. M. I style.
But, as pointed out above, it seems to have been the greater works on the
Palace walls that mainly influenced the marine designs on the M. M. Ill jars.
Amongst the remains of jars belonging, like the last mentioned, to the
latest M. M. Ill stage there occurred at Knossos several specimens of broad
handles terminating below in scalloped borders and some of them coated with
milky white enamel-like paint. A fuller illustration of the class of vessel
to which these handles belonged is supplied by a jar from the Cemetery
of Pachyammos, showing two scalloped handles of the same kind
(Fig. 448)/' The designs on this, dark brown on pale buff, as well as the
meant for rocks. The idea that the rocks were 1 Seager, Pachyammos, PI. IX and p. 19.
washed by spray and that this came into the 2 See above, p. 246, Fig. 186,/
artist's mind may still hold good, since, both 3 See above, p. 521, Figs. 380.
in the Dolphin Fresco and that of the Flying 4 See above, p. 520, Fig. 379.
Fish, spray is actually represented. The white 5 Op. cit., PI. XVII and p. 25. The body of
stippling, however, here seen seems, as Dr. the handle appears white in the figure owing
Mackenzie points out, to have originated from to the plaster restoration. As the remains of
the barbotine imitation of rocks as seen on its scalloped borders show, however, it had
the fragment of a large M.M. Ill vase illustrated originally a dark ground.
above, Fig. 442.
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dolphins are here shown as if leaping out of the waters, in a waved space
that opens between spray-wreathed rocks above and a lower zone with
white dots, here perhaps representing a pebbly beach.
The pendant to this is supplied by another jar from the same cemetery
(Fig. 447 d),1 also representing a ' school' of leaping dolphins, in this case,
however, depicted, without the rocks and pebbles, in dark paint, edged with
white, on a warm buff ground. Another Pachyammos jar in the same early
dark on light style shows a cuttle-fish with six tentacles in a style less purely
decorative and geometrical than that reproduced above on a polychrome
vase from the Kamares Cave.2 These vases clearly belong to the later,
transitional phase of M. M. Ill, in which we already have a foretaste of the
prevailing ceramic fashion of the beginning of the Late Minoan Age.
Parallel with these monochrome designs of marine subjects on M. M. Ill Class of
jars, which reflect the greater art of wall-painting, is another group executed Reliefs of
in small relief, of which an example has already been given in the marine AIfme
Subjects.
piece with its life-like reproductions of shells and barnacles.3 The counterpart
of these, as already noted, is to be found in the faience representations of
the ' Flying Fish ' panel.4 Shells in relief seem already to have adorned
certain vessels in the M. M. II Period.
Reliefs of this class, often very finely executed in steatite, had, as will
be shown, a great influence on the vase paintings of the finest L. M. I style.
But, as pointed out above, it seems to have been the greater works on the
Palace walls that mainly influenced the marine designs on the M. M. Ill jars.
Amongst the remains of jars belonging, like the last mentioned, to the
latest M. M. Ill stage there occurred at Knossos several specimens of broad
handles terminating below in scalloped borders and some of them coated with
milky white enamel-like paint. A fuller illustration of the class of vessel
to which these handles belonged is supplied by a jar from the Cemetery
of Pachyammos, showing two scalloped handles of the same kind
(Fig. 448)/' The designs on this, dark brown on pale buff, as well as the
meant for rocks. The idea that the rocks were 1 Seager, Pachyammos, PI. IX and p. 19.
washed by spray and that this came into the 2 See above, p. 246, Fig. 186,/
artist's mind may still hold good, since, both 3 See above, p. 521, Figs. 380.
in the Dolphin Fresco and that of the Flying 4 See above, p. 520, Fig. 379.
Fish, spray is actually represented. The white 5 Op. cit., PI. XVII and p. 25. The body of
stippling, however, here seen seems, as Dr. the handle appears white in the figure owing
Mackenzie points out, to have originated from to the plaster restoration. As the remains of
the barbotine imitation of rocks as seen on its scalloped borders show, however, it had
the fragment of a large M.M. Ill vase illustrated originally a dark ground.
above, Fig. 442.
i r r