Aegean Painting in the Bronze Age

Book excerpt: Aegean Painting in the Bronze Age is intended as a handbook for the art historian and archaeologist, with a full catalogue of examples (arranged according to site), critical discussion of the problems of chronology, a comprehensive bibliography, maps, drawings of details, and more than 100 photographic plates, 23 in color. This is the only book to give a synthesis of painting and pictorial art from its beginnings in Prepalatial Crete to the collapse of Bronze Age civilization in the Aegean. Immerwahr traces the development of Aegean painting from its origins in Crete through its spread to the Cycladic islands and to the Greek mainland, where it gave rise to the specific Mycenaean style. She studies primarily wall painting but refers also to painting on pottery and the pictorial art of seal engraving. The question of foreign influence from Egypt and Mesopotamia is discussed in connection with the origins of Minoan painting, and the new frescoes from Akrotiri on Thera are used to supplement the much more fragmentary paintings from Sir Arthur Evan's excavations at Knossos. Immerwahr also explores the interrelationship of the Minoan Cretans, the Cycladic islanders with their Minoanized enclaves on Thera and Melos, and the early Greek Mycenean mainlanders.