This was a plaster
relief of a great bull's head, which had once formed part of a
complete figure. These figures of bulls, as we have already seen in
connection with the Palace of Tiryns, were among the most favourite
subjects of Mycenaean and Minoan art; but nothing so fine as the
Knossos relief had yet been discovered. 'It is life-sized, or somewhat
over, and modelled in high relief. The eye has an extraordinary
prominence, its pupil is yellow, and the iris a bright red, of
which narrower bands again appear encircling the white towards the
lower circumference of the ball. The horn is of greyish-blue, and
both this and the other parts of the relief are of exceptionally
hard plaster, answering to the Italian _gesso duro_.... Such as
it is, this painted relief is the most magnificent monument of
Mycenaean plastic art that has come down to our time. The rendering
of the bull, for which the artists of the period showed so great
a predilection, is full of life and spirit. It combines in a high
degree naturalism with grandeur, and it is no exaggeration to say
that no figure of a bull, at once so powerful and so true, was
produced by later classical art.'[*] Plate XIII. shows that this
high praise is not undeserved; to match the naturalism of this
magnificent Minoan monster one must turn to the Old Kingdom tomb
reliefs of Egypt, or to the exquisite Eighteenth Dynasty statue of
a cow unearthed in 1906 by Naville from the Temple of Mentuhotep
Neb-hapet-Ra, at Deir-el-Bahri.
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