Olive Oil in Art

Olive Oil in Art

Having a major impact on several facets of everyday life, the olive tree has inspired countless artists from the Minoan era and classical antiquity up until our days. A great number of regularly used objects that have been unearthed from the ruins of the great Minoan civilization carry depictions of the olive tree and its branches or foliage. Among others, the famous Knossos murals[1] - generally considered to be the finest artistic representations of the olive tree-, vases, coins and amphorae. The olive tree served well as a motif also for the Minoan craftsmen of gold jewellery.An impressive truss of gold olive tree leaves buried along with its owner, was found in a pre-palatial cemetery outside the hamlet of Mochlos near the town of Sitia.                                                                                            

Some centuries after the peak of the Minoan civilization, artists in ancient Athens found themselves attracted by a mysterious charm that the olive tree exerted on them. Homer, Plato, Aristophanes, Pausanias, Aeschylus and other great names of the renowned ancient Greek artistic and intellectual elite refer one way or another to the olive tree or the olive oil and its production process. Athenian sculptors, blacksmiths and other artisans were also greatly influenced by the olive tree. In Phidias’s “Olympian Zeus”, certainly the greatest and most grandiose statue of the great Greek god Zeus, a wreath made from gold olive tree twigs was used to decorate the head of the god. In more modern times, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) drawing his inspiration from the rural life in South France painted ‘The Olive Trees’ (picture), a landscape of olive trees in the blazing heat of the Mediterranean sun. Some of the greatest Greek poets and writers including Elytis (Nobel Laureate 1979) Palamas, Venezis, Kazantzakis, Papadiamantis, Sikelianos, Kalvos and others, have dedicated lines to the majesty of the olive tree. In ‘The Olive Harvest’, the famous Greek painter Theophilus uses the olive tree as his “model” and delivers a painting of exceptional artistic quality.                                                      

All in all, the relationship of art, Greek or not, with the olive tree remains tight from antiquity up until our days. Α charming attachment that Elytis aptly delineates  in the following triplet:

Midday July...
even if there were no olive groves...
I would have invented them.



[1] Currently hosted in the archaeological museum of Heraklion

News

Why Extra Virgin Olive Oil is The Healthiest Fat on Earth
Why Extra Virgin Olive Oil is The Healthiest Fat on Earth
Role of Olive Oil in Reducing Oxidative Stress
Role of Olive Oil in Reducing Oxidative Stress
Join our mail list to receive our e-catalogue.