Bernice Jones reconstructs two Mycenaean frescoes using experimental costume replications and digital imaging to argue that they are not as they appear to be.
In 1970, fresco fragments were unearthed near the House of the High Priest at Mycenae, which was destroyed at the end of Late Helladic IIIB/beginning of Late Helladic IIIC. The fragments stylistically predate the building’s destruction, especially the largest and most significant, known as the Mykenaia, which is illustrated here. In the early 1980s, the Mykenaia and its associated fragments were together identified as a seated goddess who has just received jewels from a procession of women, although some remarked that the design of the skirt on the figure was “curious.” Indeed, to this author’s knowledge, there is no parallel in Aegean art either for a flounced garment so arranged or for what, at that time, was interpreted as an "outside band of cloth with vertical decorations." This study thus proposes a new arrangement of the fragments and a reinterpretation of the fresco that is more consistent with the corpus of female figures in Minoan and Mycenaean art.
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