Precision Restoration
Late Bronze Age (LBA)
Late Minoan I (LM I) Period
Late Cycladic I (LC I) Period
Painted sometime before ~1615 BC
Beta Sector, Room 1, South Wall
Akrotiri, Thera (Santorini), Greece

This fresco depicts two young boys boxing and was found during the excavations conducted by Spyridon Marinatos from 1967 to 1974 at Akrotiri on the southern coast of the ringed islands of Santorini (the Pompeii of the Aegean) which was covered by thick deposits of ash and pumice from the great Bronze Age eruption of the Santorini volcano that occurred between 1627 and 1600 BC. It was discovered on the south wall of room 1 in the Beta Sector and is 0.94 meters (3.1 feet) wide and 2.75 meters (9.0 feet) high.

The Beta Sector not only contained the famous wall paintings of the Antelopes and the Boxing Boys but also included the “Fresco of the Monkeys” which depicted monkeys climbing on rocks near a river.