On the far eastern coast of Crete, there lies in a remote bay the Minoan town of Zakros, a major Bronze Age urban centre. First discovered in 1902, the palace wasn't uncovered until the 1960s, and the artefacts from Zakros palace are some of the most celebrated works of art to emerge from the Minoan Civilisation. But during the original excavations at House A in the north of the town, a large number of clay sealings were unearthed, many of which bore the consistent hand of a single artist, a truly gifted seal-engraver with a profound and unique vision: the Zakro Master.
The Minoan civilisation is replete with sealstones. From the earliest Pre-Palatial periods in which the village chiefs marked their trade goods using simply-incised gems, to the late Proto- and Neopalatial periods in which complex iconographies were common for ruling families of the urban centres, Bronze Age Cretans made use of a range of religious and naturalistic imageries as part of their public identities. Seal-engravers drew upon a visual koine for their creations, a communal repository of mythological, naturalistic, religious and visionary forms that extended across most parts of the island.
The Minoan civilisation is replete with sealstones. From the earliest Pre-Palatial periods in which the village chiefs marked their trade goods using simply-incised gems, to the late Proto- and Neopalatial periods in which complex iconographies were common for ruling families of the urban centres, Bronze Age Cretans made use of a range of religious and naturalistic imageries as part of their public identities. Seal-engravers drew upon a visual koine for their creations, a communal repository of mythological, naturalistic, religious and visionary forms that extended across most parts of the island.
The large polity centred upon the urban sprawl at Knossos tended to dominate the artistic aesthetics of the whole of Crete, the Cycladic islands to the north and even on the Greek mainland. The format of the sealstone engraving lent itself particularly well to images of the epiphany, pastoral scenes and religious images, and Minoan artesans utilised the limited space with deft creativity.
1. Crete - Neopalatial Minoan sites mentioned in the text
But in the far east, tastes were more inclined towards the eccentric: chthonic deities and human-animal hybrids proved popular in the provinicial centres of Zakros and Palaikastro. Zakros also maintained, uniquely for Crete, very strong links with both Syria and Cyprus, and so the iconography of the sealstones enjoyed a strong Middle Eastern influence. In general the archaeology at Zakros has been less generous with the survival of the original sealstones than at larger centres such as Knossos or Phaistos, but the fire which destroyed the town in 1450BC preserved a great many clay impressions, and it is from these that the Zakro Master's work is known.
The Zakro Master appears to have lived in or near the palace at Zakros, engraving seals for the ruling families of the palace as well as for the merchants and traders at Zakros - Weingarten employs a complex but ingenious line of logic to suggest that his clients were mostly women, and posits that he lived around 1500BC, some two generations before the destruction of the town. It is likely he did not live long enough to witness this destruction.
Even by the bizarre standards of Eastern Crete, the Zakro Master's work stands out: starting from the local tradition of chthonic and animal-hybrid images, he developed personal and fantastical responses to these themes, often merging previously-disparate imageries to create novel and innovative forms.
Large-breasted Bird Ladies (designed to be seen in the impression rather than the original engravings) blend into fantasy animal masks, bucrania (bull-heads) meld into gorgons and Minotaurs, the like of which is seen nowhere else, either in Crete or in the wider Bronze Age Mediterranean. Judging from the surviving body of his work, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the Zakro Master is one of the earliest individuals (rather than anonymous collective) whose work can be identified as forming an essential link of the evolving lineage of the visionary, the imaginal and the fantastic.
Intriguingly, some of the earliest depictions of human-bull hybrids are seen in the Zakro Master's work; generally images of the Minotaur are held to be a later Greek invention, but it is possible that the imagination of this visionary engraver from the Bronze Age palace at Zakros was the seed of this now well-known archetype.
The Zakro Master appears to have lived in or near the palace at Zakros, engraving seals for the ruling families of the palace as well as for the merchants and traders at Zakros - Weingarten employs a complex but ingenious line of logic to suggest that his clients were mostly women, and posits that he lived around 1500BC, some two generations before the destruction of the town. It is likely he did not live long enough to witness this destruction.
Even by the bizarre standards of Eastern Crete, the Zakro Master's work stands out: starting from the local tradition of chthonic and animal-hybrid images, he developed personal and fantastical responses to these themes, often merging previously-disparate imageries to create novel and innovative forms.
Large-breasted Bird Ladies (designed to be seen in the impression rather than the original engravings) blend into fantasy animal masks, bucrania (bull-heads) meld into gorgons and Minotaurs, the like of which is seen nowhere else, either in Crete or in the wider Bronze Age Mediterranean. Judging from the surviving body of his work, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the Zakro Master is one of the earliest individuals (rather than anonymous collective) whose work can be identified as forming an essential link of the evolving lineage of the visionary, the imaginal and the fantastic.
Intriguingly, some of the earliest depictions of human-bull hybrids are seen in the Zakro Master's work; generally images of the Minotaur are held to be a later Greek invention, but it is possible that the imagination of this visionary engraver from the Bronze Age palace at Zakros was the seed of this now well-known archetype.
2. Form of the lentoid sealstone as engraved by the Zakro Master
Despite the vast array of different shapes available to him, he seemed to have worked exclusively on lentoid seals: convex, lens-shaped gemstones generally no more than 4cm in diameter, and whose image area is almost perfectly circular. Unlike virtually all other Minoan engravers, the Zakro Master utilised this medium to generate images of a delightful symmetry and balance.
Many figures greet the viewer face-on in a posture consistent with vertical symmetry, but in cases where the head is turned sideways, such symmetry-breaking is often compensated for with balancing features, such as a head-dress, horns or antlers. The lentoid form was thus for him a framing device rather than an absolute boundary: far from being a limitation, the small circular area was here transformed into an advantage.
Typically for an archaic visionary, the Zakro Master's work has since its discovery undergone a number of conflicting assessments, largely influenced by the dominant ideologies of the day. In the early part of the twentieth century, Evans and Della Seta confined themselves to utilitarian analyses and limited criticisms, while deeper misgivings were voiced by Nilsson, who dismissed the images as the product of an "overactive, fever-stricken imagination". Gill preferred the Zakro Master to be "a madman, encouraged by the townsfolk in the belief that the sealstones from his hand would have had an extra touch of the supernatural". Thus do we see the rationalist influences of the mid 20th century on the assessments of the Zakro Master's work.
It wasn't until 1970 that the art historian John Boardman began to rehabilitate the Zakro Master: "The Zakro impressions are work of rare ability and imagination. The devices are grotesques composed of human and animal parts with which Hieronymous Bosch could well have felt at home...The Zakro Master created an idiom which goes far beyond anything we can find again in the history of Minoan or indeed Greek art. The technique is perfect."
Here, then, we see genuine appreciation of the sealstones not merely as Minoan artefacts, or as religious symbols, but as artistic visions springing from the mind of a talented individual. Simandiraki-Grimshaw further added to the praise: "…[his] reinvention and combination of hybrid elements ranges from innovation and whim to psychedelia."
Many figures greet the viewer face-on in a posture consistent with vertical symmetry, but in cases where the head is turned sideways, such symmetry-breaking is often compensated for with balancing features, such as a head-dress, horns or antlers. The lentoid form was thus for him a framing device rather than an absolute boundary: far from being a limitation, the small circular area was here transformed into an advantage.
Typically for an archaic visionary, the Zakro Master's work has since its discovery undergone a number of conflicting assessments, largely influenced by the dominant ideologies of the day. In the early part of the twentieth century, Evans and Della Seta confined themselves to utilitarian analyses and limited criticisms, while deeper misgivings were voiced by Nilsson, who dismissed the images as the product of an "overactive, fever-stricken imagination". Gill preferred the Zakro Master to be "a madman, encouraged by the townsfolk in the belief that the sealstones from his hand would have had an extra touch of the supernatural". Thus do we see the rationalist influences of the mid 20th century on the assessments of the Zakro Master's work.
It wasn't until 1970 that the art historian John Boardman began to rehabilitate the Zakro Master: "The Zakro impressions are work of rare ability and imagination. The devices are grotesques composed of human and animal parts with which Hieronymous Bosch could well have felt at home...The Zakro Master created an idiom which goes far beyond anything we can find again in the history of Minoan or indeed Greek art. The technique is perfect."
Here, then, we see genuine appreciation of the sealstones not merely as Minoan artefacts, or as religious symbols, but as artistic visions springing from the mind of a talented individual. Simandiraki-Grimshaw further added to the praise: "…[his] reinvention and combination of hybrid elements ranges from innovation and whim to psychedelia."
3. Bronze Age seal-engraving technology
But it is archaeologist Judith Weingarten who has made probably the most in-depth study of the sealings of the Zakro Master, considering him to be an original artist of "unusual imagination and vision, capable of controlled experimentation and development."
Describing him as an artist who drew from the corpus of Minoan chthonic deities, albeit often developing them beyond recognition, she has identified a number of signs of the Zakro Master's hand, outlining his strong sense of symmetry, his expression of contrast between light and shadow in the depth of the engravings, his delight in women of generous proportions bearing accessories such as belts or necklaces, and the subject's lack of torsion, a feature so ubiquitous elsewhere in Minoan art. Using such criteria, she has reconstructed a possible stylistic history of the Zakro Master, suggesting possible orders in which the sealings may have been created.
From the surviving evidence, he appears to have begun his career engraving fantasy animal mask designs such as lions and boars that have a certain antecedent in eastern Cretan engraving traditions. But his originality is evident even in these early works: boar masks contain winged elements, horns transmute into human legs, and lion eyes could equally be embryonic breasts which evolved later into Bird Ladies. His stylistic development continues in the exploration – and to a certain extent deconstruction – of the form of the Bird Lady image, transforming her into side-facing leaping forms and running winged forms. The final works posited by Weingarten are the bucrania in which for the first time we see irregularity and asymmetry in the Zakro Master's oeuvre.
What, then, of the Zakro Master's legacy? His influence does appear to have been fairly limited in his own lifetime, whether because of the provincial nature of his sphere of influence or perhaps because of his unreachable individuality, nonetheless a few engravers at Zakros, Sklavokampo and at Ayia Triada show some of his influence in their works. Later, the rising prestige and aesthetics of Knossos in the years up to 1400BC had no time for eastern eccentricities and the destruction of many Minoan sites after this period sent many of Crete's most talented engravers abroad to find work in the Mycenaean courts on the Greek mainland, environments which often did not tolerate or understand the uniqueness of Cretan art, let alone the chthonic oddities and animal hybrids of Zakros.
Describing him as an artist who drew from the corpus of Minoan chthonic deities, albeit often developing them beyond recognition, she has identified a number of signs of the Zakro Master's hand, outlining his strong sense of symmetry, his expression of contrast between light and shadow in the depth of the engravings, his delight in women of generous proportions bearing accessories such as belts or necklaces, and the subject's lack of torsion, a feature so ubiquitous elsewhere in Minoan art. Using such criteria, she has reconstructed a possible stylistic history of the Zakro Master, suggesting possible orders in which the sealings may have been created.
From the surviving evidence, he appears to have begun his career engraving fantasy animal mask designs such as lions and boars that have a certain antecedent in eastern Cretan engraving traditions. But his originality is evident even in these early works: boar masks contain winged elements, horns transmute into human legs, and lion eyes could equally be embryonic breasts which evolved later into Bird Ladies. His stylistic development continues in the exploration – and to a certain extent deconstruction – of the form of the Bird Lady image, transforming her into side-facing leaping forms and running winged forms. The final works posited by Weingarten are the bucrania in which for the first time we see irregularity and asymmetry in the Zakro Master's oeuvre.
What, then, of the Zakro Master's legacy? His influence does appear to have been fairly limited in his own lifetime, whether because of the provincial nature of his sphere of influence or perhaps because of his unreachable individuality, nonetheless a few engravers at Zakros, Sklavokampo and at Ayia Triada show some of his influence in their works. Later, the rising prestige and aesthetics of Knossos in the years up to 1400BC had no time for eastern eccentricities and the destruction of many Minoan sites after this period sent many of Crete's most talented engravers abroad to find work in the Mycenaean courts on the Greek mainland, environments which often did not tolerate or understand the uniqueness of Cretan art, let alone the chthonic oddities and animal hybrids of Zakros.
4. Two clay sealings in the hand of the Zakro Master - Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
And so, the Zakro Master's legacy, never very great, falls as silent as many of the other great Cretan visionary traditions, and his influence for us may not so much rest in the visual imagery as in the mythical symbols this inventive visionary bequeathed later generations, most notably the Minotaur, which has become one of the most celebrated archetypes from the Classical age. Perhaps also with his modern reputation finally rehabilitated, his legacy may live on in the dissemination of his work in media such as the present text so that he may once again take his rightful place in the visionary lineage from ancient times into the future.
Selections from the Zakro Master
The images below form a representative sample of the Zakro Master's oeuvre, some 20 impressions from a surviving corpus of around 130. They are presented following Weingarten's approximate reconstructed order of composition, with an emphasis on what seems to have been his favourite subject: Bird Ladies. Scans of the original seal impressions (taken from Hogarth and from Weingarten - only black & white images were available) are accompanied by the author's personal sketches of the imagery. In some cases, a certain level of reconstruction has been possible due to the essential symmetry within much of the Zakro Master's work.
5. Lion Mask images, interspersed with bird, protome and leaping motifs
6. Bird Ladies, showing both variation and symmetry
7. Bird Ladies: a Syrian influence is visible here in the Zakro Master's work
8. Minotaur, Stag, Bird Protome and Gorgon
9. Boar Masks and Bucrania
Bibliography
John Boardman, Greek Gems and Finger Rings: Early Bronze Age to Late Classical, Thames & Hudson London, 1970
Alessandro Della Seta, Religion and Art: A Study in the Evolution of Sculpture, Painting and Architecture, London, 1914
David George Hogarth, The Zakro Sealings, in Excavations at Zakro, Crete, British School of Athens, 1902
Martin P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and its Survival in Greek Religion, Biblo & Tannen, 1950
Anna Simandiraki-Grimshaw, Minoan Human-Animal Hybridity, in The Master of Animals in Old World Iconography (Derek B. Counts & Bettina Arnold, eds), Archaeolingua Alapitvany Budapest, 2010
Judith Weingarten, The Zakro Master and his place in prehistory, Paul Åström Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Göteborg, 1983
Judith Weingarten, Aspects of Tradition and Innovation in the work of the Zakro Master, in Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, Supplément 11 pp167-180, Persee, 1985
Judith Weingarten, The Zakro Master and Questions of Gender, Aegeum 30, 2009
Alessandro Della Seta, Religion and Art: A Study in the Evolution of Sculpture, Painting and Architecture, London, 1914
David George Hogarth, The Zakro Sealings, in Excavations at Zakro, Crete, British School of Athens, 1902
Martin P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and its Survival in Greek Religion, Biblo & Tannen, 1950
Anna Simandiraki-Grimshaw, Minoan Human-Animal Hybridity, in The Master of Animals in Old World Iconography (Derek B. Counts & Bettina Arnold, eds), Archaeolingua Alapitvany Budapest, 2010
Judith Weingarten, The Zakro Master and his place in prehistory, Paul Åström Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Göteborg, 1983
Judith Weingarten, Aspects of Tradition and Innovation in the work of the Zakro Master, in Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, Supplément 11 pp167-180, Persee, 1985
Judith Weingarten, The Zakro Master and Questions of Gender, Aegeum 30, 2009
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