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This is a picture of the Minoan Harvester Vase. This vase was created around 1500 B.C.E.
The vase was craved from a specific stone called Steatite. This vase is actually two
different pieces one is the top of the vase that is used to cover the vase while the other
is the vase itself. This vase shows many different men who are marching together with what looks
looks like to be pitch forks and other objects. This is not an actual vase that would be used
for different objects such as flowers, but rather a vase that was used in multiple ritual
for dispensing libation. There are several other vessels that were discovered at the
time but none of them had the amount of detail that this one had. This vase is also believed
to be used in many different religious rituals. Mycenaean art was very different and developed
along different lines because they would use many different objects that others would not
use to create their piece. They would also create the objects by adding a lot of great
details. One example of this is with their plastic arts. They would use plastic because
they felt like creating art from specific plastic was very naturalistic and really connected
them with nature. The Minoan Harvesters Vase and Mycenaean Warriors
Vase show similarities and major differences. The two vases both possess men facing one
direction. They also both show a full frontal of the body and a profile of the faces. That
is however where the similarities end. To begin, the vases are both made from different
mediums: the Harvesters Vase is a relief sculpture and the Warriors Vase is painted. The Harvesters
Vase depicts a riotous festival or some kind of burial art. It shows great energy and youth,
whereas the Warriors Vase shows a heavier topic of men marching off to war. The artist
of the Harvesters Vase shows very much detail in the muscular and skeletal anatomy, as well
as a landscape. The Warriors Vase reveals no setting or definition in the bodies of
the figures, just the repetition of the soldier’s movements. The development of the art seems
different because the Minoans were living lives full of energy and youth, whereas the
Mycenaean’s were living as soldiers claiming the land.
In Bull—leaping, the painting is done very stylistically, with new forms of human body
shapes as well as animated body shapes. The Minoan painter seems to imply that the bull
is very agitated while in full charge by how they elongated the bulls shape, and by how
large the bull is in comparison to the three other people in this painting. Those people
being two females and one male, the male is the darker skinned individual leaping over
the bull. The male is drawn in a curvaceous form with his waist pinched and looking
highly animated as many Minoan human figures were painted. Bull—Leaping seems to have
been restored as some pieces seem to have chipped off, giving it an elderly feel to
it. Found in Grave Circle A in Mycenae, this bronze
dagger blade is inlaid with gold silver and niello. This find attests to the wealth of
the Mycenaean kings as well as to their warlike nature. On one side this blade is decorated
with a scene of four hunters attacking a lion that has struck down a fifth hunter, while
two other lions flee. The other side shows lions attacking deer. The figures are still
in Minoan style but, comparing to the Havesters vase, it lacks its depiction of human anatomy
and emotion. The subject of the scene seems to be borrowed from the ancient Near East.
Perhaps besides the influence of the Minoan culture on Mycenaean art, Near Eastern and
other ancient cultures had an effect on it as well.