Find spot: Crete, Knossos, near Royal Magazines. Found before 1914
Date: ca. 1525-1450 BCE
Clothing depicted: short-sleeved bodice (probably heanos), possible diaphanous chemise, bracelets, necklaces
Museum link: Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete
“This group of three women was originally restored by E. Gillieron, pere on the basis of other fragments of frescos from Knossos, mostly of a much smaller scale. It has been shown that details of the facial outline of the “Cup-bearer” fresco, a reproduction of which is displayed in the exhibition, supplied the model for the faces of the “Ladies in Blue”, which are not preserved at all.
This copy reproduces the few fragments of burnt and abraded original fresco, represented as slightly offset from the restoration, and shows the extent to which the Gillierons recreated the scene. Extensive restorations like this one led the writer Evelyn Waugh after a visit to the Archaeological Museum in Herakleion in 1929 to state it is not easy to judge the merits of Minoan painting “since only a few square inches of the vast area exposed to our consideration are earlier than the last twenty years, and it is impossible to disregard the suspicion that their painters have tempered their zeal for accurate reconstruction with a somewhat inappropriate prediliction for the covers of Vogue.”
-taken from metmuseum
One of the images is a screen capture from video linked below illustrating how much of the fresco is original. That said, the screenshot is showing the fragments from the Met reproduction. So take this with a grain of salt.
The reproduction from The Met may indicate a diaphanous chemise, but the original is too dark/fragmentary to confirm it.
The take away here is that the hair style and draped pearls in the hair may be entirely fabricated. I did share a zoom of the original fresco that shows something in her hair.. but I’d be hard-pressed to interpret that as strings of beads.
Sources
Reproduction in The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/258137
“The Controversies & the Influence of the Ladies in Blue” https://thingsthattalk.net/en/t/ttt:TVaxMV/stories/the-controversies-and-the-influence-of-the-ladies-in-blue
“The Lady in Red: A Complementary Figure to the Ladies in Blue” https://www.jstor.org/stable/41674225
Wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wall_painting_of_three_women_%28Ladies_in_Blue%29_from_Knossos_%28outside_Royal_Magazines%29_-_Heraklion_AM.jpg
Bryan Burns. [UNHCOLA] (April 29, 2015). The Mycenaeans and Minoans Today: Revivals of Bronze Age Greece [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUm-A1MYlYc
