Ilaria Caloi is Associate Professor of Aegean Prehistory at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. As a member of the Italian Archaeological School at Athens, she has worked at Phaistos, Kamilari, and Ayia Triada for more than 20 years. In 2013 Caloi started a collaboration with the French School of Athens at Malia and with the University of Louvain at Sissi. Her publications focus on three areas: Minoan ceramic production, the archeology of death, and the reception of Aegean art in the 20th century. The reception of Minoan art in the work of Spanish artist Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (Granada, 1871 - Venice, 1949) is the subject of her book Modernita Minoica: L' arte egea e l' art nouveau. Il case di Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (2011).

About the Lecture

Caloi's paper explores the reception of Minoan culture by the Spanish artist Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (Granada, 1871 - Venice, 1949). Fortuny was an important representative of European fashion in the first half of the 20th century. His textile creations, including those known as Knossos scarves, were produced from 1906 to 1928. Designed with Minoan motifs, the scarves are distinctive examples of the conscious reception of Minoan art, as Caloi’s study of Fortuny’s notes and sketches has revealed. They represent his interpretation of Minoan art, and especially Minoan woman. He chose the pioneering American dancer, Ruth St. Denis, to model his Knossos scarves during their official 1907 presentation in Berlin. St. Denis was touring Germany at the time and performing her Oriental dances. Fortuny’s choice of St. Denis whose dancing introduced a new and modern mixture of asceticism and sensuality, also reflects prominent ideas about Minoan woman that archaeologists and art historians had created in the early 20th century.