Frescoes from Akrotiri, Thera발음듣기
Frescoes from Akrotiri, Thera
Frescoes from Akrotiri, Thera
(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 calligraphic.
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 goddesses.
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)
And on an island that in the ancient world was called Thera, we found what seems to be an entire city frozen in time.발음듣기
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.발음듣기
[Voiceover] Some geologists think that this eruption was perhaps the largest volcanic eruption on the entire earth in the last 5,000 years.발음듣기
[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.발음듣기
[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.발음듣기
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.발음듣기
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.발음듣기
[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.발음듣기
But probably the most interesting feature is that these provide for us the very earliest examples of landscape painting.발음듣기
[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.발음듣기
[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.발음듣기
[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.발음듣기
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.발음듣기
[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.발음듣기
This is probably most clear, not in this so-called Spring Room, but rather in another fresco know as The Boxing Boys.발음듣기
[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, 발음듣기
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.발음듣기
But those are to eyes that have grown up in the 21st century, not eyes that grew up in 1700 B.C.E.발음듣기
[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.발음듣기
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.발음듣기
[Voiceover] We have almost no written records from the Bronze Age and the Aegean and absolutely none from the Cyclades.발음듣기
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