Islanders: The Making of the Mediterranean review – a ‘revelatory’ exhibition
Fitzwilliam Museum show focuses on island civilisations of the ancient Mediterranean
The words “insularity” and “isolation” both come from the Latin for “island”, said Maev Kennedy in The Art Newspaper. But the island civilisations of the ancient Mediterranean were anything but closed off. As this new exhibition at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum shows, they were remarkably open to outside influence – to foreign materials, skills, fashions and legends. Focusing on the classical culture of Crete, Sardinia and Cyprus, the show demonstrates that “the sea united rather than divided” these civilisations, allowing for considerable cultural cross-pollination. Bringing together around 200 objects dating from the Neolithic era to the Roman period, it shows that the inhabitants of the three islands attempted to “explain their tangled histories” through storytelling – even when, as with Sardinia’s Nuragic civilisation, they had no system of writing. Among the “splendid loans” on display are a Cypriot statue of a “goddess rising from the sea” that is believed to have influenced Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus; some “vivid” bronze figurines from Sardinia; and a drawing of a dolphin – a “sacred” animal that “represented friendship” – found on Crete.
The show is “awash” with “fascinating” exhibits, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. We see bronze statuettes of a “four-eyed warrior and an archer in a horned helmet” created “five or six millennia ago” in Nuragic Sardinia. The culture was so named for its nuraghe, the “conical stone towers” that typified its architecture; so “strange” were these structures that they were later thought to be “witches’ houses”. Best of all is the “sophisticated” art of Minoan Crete, represented here by objects including an “astonishingly well-observed” copper-alloy figure of a crawling baby and a crab shell-shaped cup from around 1900BC. The show positively bursts with goodies, but more could have been done to “turn a series of impressive archaeological finds into a defter, less scrappy, piece of storytelling”.
It hardly matters, said Laura Cumming in The Observer, when the exhibition presents us with marvel after marvel. Consider, for instance, an “exquisite” little bronze ship created in Sardinia between 1000-700BC, its mast “topped with a heraldic bird”, its prow resembling the head of an ox. Cyprus, we learn, even had “its own terracotta army”, represented here by statues of “warriors riding into the dawn on horse-drawn chariots”. There’s an iron archer “raising his tremulous bow” that could be by Giacometti. “You will see Picasso and Brâncusi at every turn, and the origins of modern sculpture millennia in advance.” To call these extraordinary items “revelatory” would be an “understatement”. Indeed, “I have scarcely seen anything like them before”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (01223-333230, fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk). Until 4 June
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Political cartoons for October 26Cartoons Sunday’s editorial cartoons include Young Republicans group chat, Louvre robbery, and more
-
Why Britain is struggling to stop the ransomware cyberattacksThe Explainer New business models have greatly lowered barriers to entry for criminal hackers
-
Greene’s rebellion: a Maga hardliner turns against TrumpIn the Spotlight The Georgia congresswoman’s independent streak has ‘not gone unnoticed’ by the president
-
Roasted squash and apple soup recipeThe Week Recommends Autumnal soup is full of warming and hearty flavours
-
6 well-crafted log homesFeature Featuring a floor-to-ceiling rock fireplace in Montana and a Tulikivi stove in New York
-
Film reviews: A House of Dynamite, After the Hunt, and It Was Just an AccidentFeature A nuclear missile bears down on a U.S. city, a sexual misconduct allegation rocks an elite university campus, and a victim of government terror pursues vengeance
-
Book reviews: ‘Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife’ and ‘Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It’Feature Gertrude Stein’s untold story and Jane Leavy’s playbook on how to save baseball
-
Rachel Ruysch: Nature Into ArtFeature Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through Dec. 7
-
Music reviews: Olivia Dean, Madi Diaz, and Hannah FrancesFeature “The Art of Loving,” “Fatal Optimist,” and “Nested in Tangles”
-
Gilbert King’s 6 favorite books about the search for justiceFeature The journalist recommends works by Bryan Stevenson, David Grann, and more
-
Ready for the apocalypseFeature As anxiety rises about the state of the world, the ranks of preppers are growing—and changing.