Bull-Leaping Fresco

The Bull-Leaping Fresco is the most completely restored of several stucco panels originally sited on the upper-story portion of the east wall of the Minoan palace at Knossos in Crete [1]. It shows a bull-leaping scene [1]. Although they were frescos, they were painted on stucco relief scenes [1]. In Minoan chronology, their polychrome hues – white, pale red, dark red, blue, black – exclude them from the Early Minoan (EM) and early Middle Minoan (MM) Periods [1]. They are, in other words, instances of the "mature art" created no earlier than MM III [1]. The flakes of the destroyed panels fell to the ground from the upper story during the destruction of the palace, probably by earthquake, in Late Minoan (LM) II [1]. The subject is common in Minoan art, one of a number depicting the handling of bulls [1]. A proposed reconstruction by M. Cameron has four very similar scenes, each with a left-facing bull and three human figures, one upside-down over the bull's back, and then one at each end, the ones at the front holding the bull's horns [1].