NEW YORK—Few prehistoric cultures are as widely known as the Greek one. We have all seen the rich findings from ages ago—the beautiful frescoes, the detailed vases, the golden masks and coins.
But what you may not know is that there is a big chance that the fresco you have seen is not what the find originally looked like. Actually, many of the most recognizable and well-known images of prehistoric Minoan and Mycenaean culture are not original works, but creative reproductions, skillfully painted and put into place by famed art restorers E. Gilliéron & Son.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns the largest collection of Gilliéron reproductions in existence. These were displayed in the museum during the early 1900s. The interest in prehistoric Greek culture was high at the time, partly due to the archeological excavations made by Arthur Evans at Knossos, on the island Crete, and Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae, both in Greece.
Emile Gilliéron and his son, also named Emile, worked with these discoveries, and the results were sought after by museums as well as private collections. The exhibit currently at the Met not only tells about prehistoric Greece but also about the history of archeology.
“This exhibition is kind of a historic exhibition,” Seán Hemingway, curator at the Department of Greek and Roman Art of the Metropolitan Museum of the Art, said.
“Major works were not leaving Greece, so the only way for us to show [the findings] was through these reproductions. At the time there was a lot of excitement about these discoveries and so this was a way at a time before mass media to show what the colors were like, and the scale of these objects through reproductions,” he said.
The works of E. Gilliéron & Son were not only important for the museums that wanted to perfect their collections but also made prehistoric culture much more widely available to the masses. Through showing people what these archeological findings looked like, knowledge about past Greek culture and legacy could spread across the world, at a time when the original items could not leave Greece.
But the Gilliérons did not only make accurate copies of what was already there. In fact, most of the watercolors are not exact replicas of what was found at excavation sites like Knossos and Mycenae. The reason? It is simply very hard finding complete frescoes from ancient times.
What is actually preserved is very fragmentary, and only bits and pieces are found, making for a puzzle that can prove difficult to solve. This is where the Gilliérons would enter the picture.
Gilliéron and his son would transform the small and incomplete fragments of frescos made more than 3,000 years ago into complete paintings. Skillfully piecing the parts they had together and using their creativity to fill in the empty and unknown parts, they made something complete out of parts.
One example is the “Ladies in Blue” fresco, a picture of three young Minoan ladies, dressed in blue, wearing lots of jewelry. This is, however, not exactly what the original fresco looked like.
Very few pieces were found from the original “Ladies in Blue” fresco. Only small parts of the painting, such as the hands, were recovered. The faces were not preserved at all.
When Gilliéron the younger did the reproduction, he filled in faces, clothing, and other missing details. Through seeking inspiration in other frescos from the time, he tried to recreate the painting as close to traditional Minoan style as possible.
This creativity and skill has made the Gilliérons some of the most well-known and acclaimed art restorers of their time. After having been a staple in museums earlier, their works have since largely been replaced with originals for people to view.
The Metropolitan Museum is now once again displaying the colorful watercolor paintings and fascinating replicas of famous findings such as the “Mask of Agamemnon” and the “Throne of Minos”—helping people of our time to gain a better understanding of prehistoric culture.
These works can benefit visitors in more ways than as a lesson in prehistory. These pieces of art can also serve as a great source of inspiration for artists feeling intrigued by the styles of prehistoric Greece—as a way for artists of different times to share their ideas and perceptions.
“I think ancient art can be very inspiring for artists today,” Hemingway said. “The choice of colors and of subject is often very different from modern sensibilities, and people sometimes connect with images from thousands of years ago.”
Hemingway said that some aspects still resonate with people today, including “one of the wonderful very early scenes of landscape.” “Artists still love landscape, and we have some of the earliest examples of landscape painting from Europe and the eastern Mediterranean,” he said.
May seeing this exhibit not only teach you a thing or two about the Minoans and Mycenaeans, but also supply you with inspiration all the way from prehistoric Greece.
Exhibition tour on Friday, Nov. 4, 11 a.m. to noon. Historic Images of The Greek Bronze Age: The Reproductions of E. Gilliéron & Son is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until June 17, 2012.
