great change from that
of Middle Minoan II. Polychrome decoration steadily declines, and
is superseded by monochrome. The beautiful lustrous black glaze
ground of the vases is replaced by a dull purple slip on which
the decoration is often laid in a powdery white paint. The best
designs are found in this white upon a lilac or mauve ground. In
the designs themselves conventionalism and geometric ornament pass
away, and are followed by a development of naturalism. Dr. Mackenzie
has pointed out that it is to this growth of naturalism that we
must trace the gradual disappearance of polychrome decoration.
'Once we have the portrayal of natural objects, such as flowers,
which becomes so rife before the close of the Middle Minoan Age,
it soon becomes apparent that a scale of colours, which in their
relation to each other were capable of producing polychrome effects
of great beauty, was quite inadequate towards the reproduction of
the natural colours of objects. Thus green, for example, which is
the first necessity towards the rendering of leaves and stems, did
not exist in the colour repertory of the vase painter. The ceramic
artist must thus have felt that with his limited scale of colours
he could not produce the same natural effects as the wall-painter
with his. On the other hand, he must have been equally conscious
that natural objects such as flowers did not look natural in a
polychrome guise which was not that of Nature. The only solution
of the colour difficulty in the circumstances was a compromise in
the shape of a convention. Thus the tendency came into being to
make all natural objects either simply light on a dark ground,
or dark on a light ground.'[*]

[Footnote *: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol. Xxvi., part I,
pp. 257, 258.]

The two flowers most generally used for the purpose of ornamentation
are the lily and the crocus. For the first time the importance of
pottery as an evidence of the condition of the art of the period
is second to that of other artistic products. It is to Middle Minoan
III. that there belongs the wonderful fabric of faience, of which so
many specimens were discovered in the Temple Repositories. In them
the same tendency towards naturalism reveals itself. The wild-goat
suckling its kid, the flying-fish, the porcelain vases, one of them
with cockle-shell relief, and another with ferns and rose-leaves
on a ground of pale green, are all instances of the naturalistic
growth. Evidence is al