ABSTRACT
Wall paintings first appear in the Final Neolithic and Early Minoan periods on Crete, developing into more abstract designs and technological complexity in the Middle Minoan period, and reaching their highpoint with the introduction of pictorial painting in MM IIA. This chapter considers the location of these frescoes and the effect of forms of lighting on the perception of the viewer and the interplay between colour and light and the changing relationship between the two depending on light source and time of day. The subject of colour in Minoan art has been widely discussed, with the majority of scholarship focused on the technicalities of colour production, or on the symbolic value of colour. Colour perception is affected by the intensity of illumination. This is at the heart of the phenomenon known as the Purkinje effect, which was named after the Bohemian anatomist and physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyn. The effect describes how colour contrast varies under different levels of illumination.
