Pictures photos images of Minoan paintings, Minoan pottery, Minoan antiquities and artefacts from the very best Minoan museum collections. The Minoans were a Bronze Age Aegean civilization inhabiting the island of Crete and surrounding Aegean Islands from around 3000 BC to 1100 BC. Sir Arthur Evans excavations at Knossos began in Marc h 1900 and led him to believe that he had discovered the Palace of King Minos, and the labyrinth of the fabled Minotaur. He therefore named the civilisation the Minoans. The sophisticated art and antiquities excavated at Minoan sites show that the Minoans were great craftsmen and creative artists. The Minoans decorated their walls with fresco paintings using the buon fresco technique which consists of painting with pigment ground in water on a thin layer of wet, fresh, lime mortar or plaster. When the plaster dries the painting also dries, becoming an integral part of the wall. The Minoans covered the stone walls with a mixture of mud and straw coated with lime plaster topped with fine plaster. The Minoans had a distinct painting style with shapes formed by curvilinear lines that add a feeling of liveliness to the paintings. The Minoan colour palette is based in earth tones of white, brown, red, and yellow. The black and vivid blues paints used combined to create vivid and rich decorations. The most famous Minoan paintings are the Bull leaper, Blue lady and blue monkey frescoes. The Minoans were great potters producing decorated and plain pottery ranging from bull head shaped rhythons, to pottery baths and coffins. Rhytons are containers from which fluids were intended to be drunk or to be poured in some ceremony such as libation, or merely at table. Many have an opening at the bottom through which the liquid fell; others did not, and were merely used as drinking cups, with the characteristic that they could not usually be set down on a surface without spilling their contents. Minoans made bull shaped Rhytons, and well as conical rhythons decorated with octopus designs or simply left undecorated. Pottery larnax coffin boxes were often used as a container for human remains in Minoan burials. The Minoan larnax chest was decorated on the outside and usually had a pitched roof. One distinctive Minoan decorative design on pottery was that of s stylised octopus. This design can be seen in our pictures decorating rhythons, pots and vases. Browse pictures and images of Minoan art, paintings & pottery antiquities and artefacts from Heraklion & Athens Archaeological Museum & Thira Akrotiri Museum

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