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Frescoes from Akrotiri, Thera
Frescoes from Akrotiri, on the Cycladic island Thera (Santorini), Greece, 16th century B.C.E., Aegean Bronze Age (National Archaeological Museum, Athens). Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
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- At0:48, the two historians mentioned that when Santorini blew itself apart, it became one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the last 5000 years. I'm wondering if this is where the legend of Atlantis comes from, as the Cycladic civilization was certainly capable of great art/intellect as well as corrupt politics/religion cults, thus matching Plato's description of the island as a cautionary tale. Besides, the resulting tsunami would have devastated the region to the point of eliminating the civilization off the face of the earth, thus providing terror and inspiration for the legend to grow. But do we have any concrete proof that the Santorini eruption actually did help foster the legend, or was Plato just writing down a morality tale for naughty leaders/locals? Plus, why wouldn't anyone want to rebuild the civilization after the disaster occurred?(13 votes)
- That very well could be the case. I found this on the eruption and on theories related to it. The timing and the possible location sure seems to match up. Check out this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_eruption#Atlantis(8 votes)
- From what was the "blue" in the blue compounded? If not Lapiz from Afghanistan, then what?(6 votes)
- Both Egyptian blue and glaucophane are used in the Thera frescoes.(7 votes)
- Why there is so little about the history of the Aegean Art? On the other classes about the Egyptian art and Ancient Near East art there are a ton of examples about how the art developted in the context of their culture. Does any record (that could tell more about their way of living) from that time survived? I want to know more about them!(4 votes)
- At0:45, the video discusses the grandeur of the eruption, and how it compares to others over the past 5,000 years. Are there any written documents or depictions of the devastation from other cultures that were thriving at the time, such as Egypt?(2 votes)
- There might be, but nothing that's known of for certain- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_eruption#Historical_impact(1 vote)
- Who painted these frescoes originally?(1 vote)
- From the author:Presumably the people who lived on Thera. We don't know the names of the artists.(1 vote)
- What year was Akrotiri discovered by modern archaeologists?(1 vote)
- There didn't seem to be much original fresco remaining with regards to the boxing boys. How did they decide what the fresco represented? It looked like only the very edge of the boxing mitt was original. Were there similar scenes in other paintings or pottery found nearby?(1 vote)
- If you look closely, the reconstruction is actually fairly conservative. The logic seems, to me at least, to be on solid ground.(1 vote)
- I think the flowers coming out of rocks in the spring room look like volcanos. Could this be a valid interpretation, when you consider the fertile earth that volcanos leave behind, which would promote the growth of many plants?(1 vote)
- Did anyone notice that in the spring room the flowers painted on wall are almost all in the group of 3? I wonder if it's coincidence or 3 means something in Cycladic culture/religion?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(jazz piano music) - [Voiceover] The Aegean Bronze Age is made up of three cultures. On the mainland and slightly
later, the Mycenaean. On the large island of Crete to the east, you have the Minoan culture. And then, you have a chain of
islands called the Cyclades. And on an island that in the
ancient world was called Thera, we found what seems to be an
entire city frozen in time. - [Voiceover] Today the
island is known as Santorini. We might be better off saying
what's left of the island because in the 17th century,
most archaeologists agree, there was a volcanic
eruption that basically blew open the middle of the island. - [Voiceover] Some geologists
think that this eruption was perhaps the largest volcanic eruption on the entire earth in
the last 5,000 years. - [Voiceover] As a result,
just like in Pompeii, a town on the island of
Santorini or ancient Thera, Akrotiri, was preserved under layers of volcanic ash and pumice. - [Voiceover] But unlike Pompeii, the site was not discovered before modern archaeological
techniques had developed and so whereas in Pompeii
there was extensive damage by people who were
removing art as trophies, the site at Thera is
in the process of being systematically studied and uncovered. It's interesting because
archaeologists think that the earliest people in Akrotiri did not have much relationship with either Mycenae or with the Minoans on Crete. But that seems to have changed later so much so that some art
historians think that Akrotiri became a settlement
that was directly related and perhaps directly under
the control of the Minoans. - [Voiceover] And we also know that they traded with the Mycenaeans. So we shouldn't imagine these
as very separate cultures. - [Voiceover] What we found
are a series of houses of prosperous inhabitants. We haven't found palaces
but we have found structures that have more than one story. And we've also found
walls covered with fresco. - [Voiceover] We're looking
at a series of frescoes. All of them unusual in
their subject matter. - [Voiceover] Probably the
most outstanding feature of the frescoes that we've found, and these are true frescoes, that is, this is wet painting
over a fine layer of plaster over a rougher layer
of plaster, over straw. But probably the most
interesting feature is that these provide for us the
very earliest examples of landscape painting. - [Voiceover] It's hard to
call them landscape painting in the way that we might think about it, with fields and trees and sky, because it's very
abstracted, very stylized. We see a lot of curve-linear
forms standing for the rocks. We see blues and reds and yellows. These are colors that
were very commonly used in their fresco painting. - [Voiceover] And then we see
again abstracted renderings of lilies, of flowering
plants, that decorate the tops of those rocks as well as representations of swallows
cavorting around the flowers. - [Voiceover] There's
a shelf and above that the room is painted red and so, we don't have a sense of a blue sky. The backgrounds were consistently white. Now it's important as we look
at this to distinguish between the in-painting that the
museum has done for us to give us a sense of the whole room, verses the ancient fresco. - [Voiceover] Modern
conservation techniques seek to stabilize and to give us
a sense of what the image would have looked like without
trying to restore the object to it's original state. This is probably most clear, not in this so-called Spring Room, but rather in another fresco
know as The Boxing Boys. - [Voiceover] And in the same room we see a pair of antelopes. - [Voiceover] The antelopes
are almost caligraphic. There is this beautiful serpentine line. I'm not seeing any straight lines throughout this entire wall. And there's this feeling of grace in the representation of these animals. - [Voiceover] We have to be cautious about reading into it too much because to us there's a sense of almost the pleasure of nature
in the scene of animals and also in the Spring fresco, where we can almost sense a warm day, of flowers blowing in the wind, a sense of colors being
intensified by the sunlight, of birds in the air, the
pleasures of a spring day. But maybe this had some
kind of ritual significance. Maybe it just is a beautiful spring day. It's impossible for us to know. - [Voiceover] To our modern
eyes, it feels whimsical, it feels like it is all about pleasure. It's about bringing the
exterior world inside. But those are to eyes that have grown up in the 21st century, not eyes
that grew up in 1700 B.C.E. - [Voiceover] With The Boxing Boys we can clearly see that
very little remained from the ancient fresco but enough to give us a sense of a
very unusual composition of two boys who have boxing mitts on, whose heads are shaven except for pony tails in the front
and back of their heads. - [Voiceover] You can see
that they're wearing belts. They seem to be nude otherwise except for their boxing gloves and I see some traces of
jewelry around the upper arm and the neck of the figure on the left. - [Voiceover] A lot of the frescoes that were found at Akrotiri seem to have ritual function. Many seem to be related to religious rituals or rites related to cults around godesses. But it's impossible for us to understand the iconography and the
meaning of those frescoes. - [Voiceover] We have
almost no written records from the Bronze Age and the Aegean and absolutely none from the Cyclades. And so, what we're forced to look at are simply the physical remains of the architecture, of the
vessels that have been found as well as these extraordinary frescoes. (jazz piano music)