Painting in the Mycenaean period seems to have been nearly, if not
entirely, confined to the decoration of house-walls and of
pottery. Similarly sculpture had no existence as a great,
independent art. There is no trace of any statue in the round of
life-size or anything approaching that. This agrees with the
impression we get from the Homeric poems, where, with possibly one
exception, [Footnote: Iliad VI, 273, 303.] there is no allusion to
any sculptured image. There are, to be sure, primitive statuettes,
one class of which, very rude and early, in fact pre-Mycenaean in
character, is illustrated by Fig. 31. Images of this sort have
been found principally on the islands of the Greek Archipelago.
They are made of marble or limestone, and represent a naked female
figure standing stiffly erect, with arms crossed in front below
the breasts. The head, is of extraordinary rudeness, the face of a
horse-shoe shape, often with no feature except a long triangular
nose. What religious ideas were associated with these barbarous
little images by their possessors we can hardly guess.
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