Pictorial Style and Mycenaean wall paintings: some affinities in composition

The Pictorial Style characterises the final stages of Mycenaean pottery (LH IIIA1–IIIC), and it was used to illustrate narrative scenes, depicted mostly on kraters. The vessels were painted with chariots, warriors, animals and more complex images, and that is why some scholars saw the frescoes in Mycenaean palaces as the source of inspiration for this ceramic style. The link between the Mycenaean Pictorial Style pottery and the wall paintings has not been clearly established, however. Some motifs have a compositional scheme similar to that of the wall paintings, but details of the figures differ. Painters of kraters in the Pictorial Style used several subjects that are represented in the Mycenaean frescoes too, but in a distinctive manner, and with a different communicative purpose. The aim of the present paper is to demonstrate that the Pictorial Style is a separate art form from the frescoes, by making an iconographic comparison based on several examples on vases, frescoes, and also seals.