STUDIES IN

ICONOGRAPHY
Volume 35

2014

Published under the auspices of the Index of Christian Art,

Princeton University

by
Medieval Institute Publications
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo
 A Maniera greca: Content, Context,
and Transformation of a Term

Anastasia Drandaki

To the memory of Titos Papamastorakis

In 2004 at the private view for the exhibition Pilgrimage to Sinai at the
Benaki Museum, I had the privilege of showing the president of the Hellenic
Republic, Kostis Stephanopoulos, a highly educated man and a lover of Byzan-
tine art, around the exhibits.1 When setting up the exhibition, I had placed the
striking icon of the Archangel Gabriel (Fig. 1) immediately after the large group
of so-called Crusader icons, as a bridge to the group of Palaiologan paintings.2
Standing in front of the archangel, President Stephanopoulos eyed it keenly and
exclaimed: But thats so Italian! In other words, for President Stephanopoulos
the Sinai angel stands apart from the corpus of Byzantine painting because its
manner is not Greek. This perception of the icon on the part of a cultivated, twenty-
first-century Greek, well acquainted with Byzantine art, has set me thinking about
a series of linked questions relating to the subject I am going to discuss. What are
the factors that determine the identity of a work and act as criteria for classifying it
as belonging to one tradition or another? Are these criteria the same in every period
or for each kind of public, or do they change according to the individual conscious-
ness and above all the political and religious intentions of the sponsor, viewers, and
social context in which they operate?
Using as a point of departure questions such as these, I wish to discuss in my
paper two related yet distinct issues. In the first part I will address some aspects of
the content and context of the maniera greca that emerge from its use in late medi-
eval sources on the one hand and in modern art historical studies on the other. Then
I will turn my focus on the reverse of the coin, so to speak, from West to East and
discuss briefly painting ensembles that defy conventional labels, such as maniera
greca, maniera latina, or Crusader art. Paintings that unlike famous controversial
panelsthe Kahn and Mellon Madonnas, for example3offer solid information
regarding their provenance and cultural context and may help us understand the
ideological mechanisms and the historical necessities that urged patrons and artists
alike to employ a mixed artistic language.
The literal definition of [in the] Greek mannerinternationally recognized
in the Italian form, maniera grecaappears, at least initially, easily comprehensible.

2014 by the Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University

40 Anastasia Drandaki

Fig. 1. The Archangel Gabriel. Second half of the thirteenth century. Sinai, The Holy Monastery of
St. Catherine. (Photo: Bruce White, reproduced by permission of the Holy Monastery of St. Cath-
erine, Sinai, Egypt.)
 A Maniera greca 41

The term suggests a group of iconographical and stylistic characteristics in a painted

work (I am referring only to painting here) that are sufficient in the eyes of the
viewer to classify the work in the medieval Greeki.e., Byzantinetradition of
painting. This view usually comes from a subject situated outside the Byzantine
sphere; in other words, it is a perception of Byzantine painting, or of some version
of it, by a public that is looking at it as a foreign artistic product. At the same time,
since the terms first appearance in Renaissance literature, the use of it in a source,
whether explicit or implicit, suggests a distinction is being made between this Byz-
antine/Greek painting and some other painting style against which it is measured,
such as the maniera latina or the maniera moderna which Vasari praises.4
In any case, based on the above-mentioned premises, describing a work as
a product of the Greek style does not assume that it came from Byzantium or
that the artist who created it was Greek. It only assumes that the artist adopted
those iconographical or stylistic features which sufficed to ascribe the work to that
tradition in the eyes of the viewer. Moreover, this is hinted at by Vasari himself
when he refers to the maniera greca. He is not so much interested in Greek paint-
ers but rather in the Italians, whose work classified them inor subordinated them
tothe Byzantine tradition of painting and whose obsolete artistic language he
severely criticizes.
The entirely negative approach to medieval Greek painting by Vasari (and
other Italian commentators of the Renaissance) and the long shadow this has cast
on the modern-day history of art has in the international literature of recent decades
repeatedly been the subject of critical analysis and commentary.5 However, despite
his critical approach, we still for the most part accept the content and geographi-
cal context Vasari assigned to the maniera greca (i.e., Byzantine-influenced art
produced in Italy), and his periodization (i.e., the thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries), even when the validity and adequacy of the term itself is challenged or
when the term is enclosed in quotation marks as a terminus technicus.6
Tellingly, in the glossary contained in the catalog of the exhibition Byzan-
tium Faith and Power (12611557), edited by Helen Evans, the term is defined as:
maniera greca (Ital. Greek Style): term often used derogatorily to describe the
Byzantine-influenced style of much thirteenth-century Italian painting (Fig. 2).7
This definitionthough simplified, as is only to be expected in the glossary of an
exhibition catalognevertheless fundamentally differs little from the way the term
is used in scholarly writing. For example, in her excellent book Picturing the Passion
in Late Medieval Italy Anne Derbes notes at the beginning of the first chapter under
the telling subtitle Byzantine Questions, Thirteenth-century Italian painting has
traditionally been labelled the maniera greca (a disparaging term from the begin-
ning) and its style described as Italo-Byzantine; these terms are still used today. . . .
But labels like maniera greca and Italo-Byzantine mask as much as they reveal.8
42 Anastasia Drandaki

Fig. 2. Berlinghiero, Madonna and Child. Ca. 1230. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Irma
N. Straus, 1960 (60.173). (Photo: Schecter Lee; Image The Metropolitan Museum of Art.)
 A Maniera greca 43

If it is taken for granted in the greater part of the literature nowadays that the
Italo-Byzantine painting of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century constitutes
the content of the maniera greca, paradoxically, the term also appears with equally
well-defined but not identical content in another body of contemporary writings
which deal with the painting of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century icons. In this case
the term is used in respect of icons made outside Italy, specifically in workshops in
the urban centers of Venetian Crete, however, many of these icons were destined
for an Italian or other Western European clientele (Figs. 34).9 We are no longer
dealing with works in a mixed Italo-Byzantine style, but icons which both icono-
graphically and stylistically remain true to the traditional Byzantine manner. The
use of the descriptive term alla greca for these icons is by no means arbitrary.
The term appears in fifteenth-century contracts commissioning icons that are now
kept in the archives of the Stato di Venezia.10 In these sources the icons in forma
greca are distinguished from the icons a la latina: works made in a Western style
which did not, however, correspond to contemporary trends in Italian painting of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries but assiduously repeated a limited number of
venerable Late Gothic models.11 These stylistically conservative icons alla latina
were also addressed, for the most part, to a Western European clientele, as attested
by surviving contracts between Cretan painters and merchants who, in the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries channeled their paintings to the European market.12
These two different uses of the Greek manner seem unconnected. The mod-
ern literature relating to thirteenth-century Byzantine-influenced painting in Italy
seems to know nothing of the progeny of this art. Paradoxically, the literature on
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Cretan icons also throws little light on the subject,
and I say paradoxically because one might expect the past and roots of an artis-
tic phenomenon to be explored, if not its later development.13 One could come up
with many reasons for this particular scholarly entrenchment. Students of the two
Greek manners come from different academic disciplines, each of which has its
own ideological and methodological baggage. The two parties rarely meet, even
at academic conferences.14 But over and above whatever reasons dictate or under-
mine our own personal academic approach, the question remains: does the applica-
tion of the term Greek manner for the artistic endeavour of the two periodsthe
thirteenth century on the one hand and the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on the
otherdescribe two distinct artistic phenomena going under the same name, or,
related, consecutive manifestations of the same phenomenon, which then obliges
us to examine the term in a wider time frame and geographical context?
This is something of a rhetorical question. The demand for works in the
Greek style outside the boundaries of the Byzantine world did not, of course, stop
with Giotto and Duccio. Despite the explosive flourishing of the Italian Renais-
sance, a high proportion of the icons painted in the fifteenth-century Cretan
44 Anastasia Drandaki

Fig. 3. Cretan workshop, the Virgin Galaktotrofoussa (Lactans). Mid-fifteenth cen-

tury. Benaki Museum, inv. no. 36312. Gift of Anna Papadaki. (Photo: Giorgos Fafa-
lis; 2014 by Benaki Museum Athens.)

workshops were intended to be delivered directly to Italy and Flanders, as we learn

from the Venetian archives. The icons corresponded to the religious needs, devo-
tional practices, and ideological orientation of part of the Catholic community,
which certainly did not look on them as modern artistic creations but as venerable
and authentic sacred works, hallmarked by the traditional Greek style in which the
holy personages were depicted.15 Surviving contracts reveal what amounts to mass
production of icons in Candia, with orders for hundreds of works with predeter-
mined dimensions, shape, iconography, and even color palette.16
Confirmation of the continued demand in Italy for icons in the Greek man-
ner comes from Italian authors, who as defenders of modern Italian painting rail
 A Maniera greca 45

Fig. 4. Cretan workshop, the Virgin Galaktotrofoussa (Lactans). Second half of the fifteenth century.
Benaki Museum, inv. no. 27876. (Photo: Giorgos Fafalis; 2014 Benaki Museum Athens.)

against the continuing presence of old-fashioned icons in the devotional practices

of the faithful in Italy. At the end of the sixteenth century Giovanni Battista Arme-
nini notes with evident distaste that he has been in many great houses and homes
all over Italy, And I have seen that they all boasted admirable works of art, except
for paintings of sacred images, which were mostly small pictures of some fig-
ures made in the Greek manner, very awkward, displeasing and covered with soot.
They seemed to have been displayed for every reason except to inspire devotion
or to adorn such places.17 In his dismissive phrasing, Armenini, himself a painter
and an art theorist, explicitly mentions the reason the icons alla greca continued
to be in demand: a muover divozione. Klaus Krger has rightly noticed the con-
nection between Armeninis comment and the preaching of the Dominican friar
Giovanni Dominici, who almost two hundred years earlier, in the early fifteenth
century, advised parents to urge their children to pray before old, smoke-covered
icons, not modern, highly ornamented paintings.18 In fact, Armeninis words can
be read as a direct answer to monastic circles that promoted the use of traditional
icons. In their preaching we find one of the reasons that allowed for the continuous
46 Anastasia Drandaki

demand for icons in the Greek manner, long after Byzantiums dominating impact
on the artistic developments of the West had come to an end. Dominicis preach-
ing, on the other hand, is interesting in this context for yet another reason, because
he advocates the presence of icons in every room of the house, especially images
of the Virgin and Child, a subject that enjoyed huge popularity among the clientele
of Cretan workshops.19 A confirmation of Dominicis views, as regards the omni-
presence of icons in residences of laymen in late medieval Italy, comes from the
inventory of the estate of the Siennese philosopher and doctor Bartalo di Tura Ban-
dini (written in 1484), among whose possessions were numerous small icons for
private devotion.20 Although Victor Schmidt analyzes the contents of the inventory
with respect to Siennese painting of the timeand there is absolutely no reason
to question his approachit is worth noting that Cretan workshops of the same
period painted icons and small devotional triptychs with the same subject matter
as the ones that adorned the house of Bartalo.
And it was not just the mass-produced icons that were being channeled into
the European market to cover the demands of a public with religious fervor but no
individual artistic requirements. We know of commissions for works in a mixed,
Italo-Byzantine style, which were intended for public worship, from patrons with
financial potential and high artistic expectations. One of the most interesting cases
is a monumental polyptych from Apulia, now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Bos-
ton, which Maria Constantoudaki-Kitromilides has studied and correctly attributed
to an early fifteenth-century Cretan workshop (Fig. 5).21 The polyptych, intended for
the altar of a Catholic church, was made for the Monastery of San Stephano, near
Monopoli in Apulia, which at the time belonged to the Hospitallers of Rhodes.22
The individual figures in the altarpiece each proclaim their own unadulter-
ated iconographical and stylistic origins, though the Byzantine element predom-
inates. The central figures of the enthroned Virgin and Child, and another four
figures are pure Byzantine: SS. John the Baptist, Nicholas, Sebastian, and Chris-
topher. The other two saints follow late Gothic models, in the manner in which
they were mostly depicted in works by fourteenth-century Venetian artists.23 As
regards St. Augustine, we can reasonably assume that he is depicted in Western
fashion because as a saint of the Catholic Church he was not found in the Byz-
antine iconographic tradition. Apparently the representation of this saint on the
Apulian polyptych was drawn from the standard repertoire of Cretan workshops,
since he is depicted with almost identical facial characteristics, posture, and style
on another, slightly later Cretan panel of the mid-fifteenth century, now in the Fitz-
william Museum in Cambridge.24 It is noteworthy that according to the sources at
least one devotional image of St. Augustine was on public display in Candia, in the
majestic church of San Salvatore of the Augustinians.25 And despite the fact that
scarcely anything by way of painting has been preserved in Cretan towns, we may
 A Maniera greca 47

Fig. 5. Cretan workshop, Virgin and Child Enthroned with SS. Christopher, Augustine, Stephen, John
the Baptist, Nicholas, and Sebastian. Early fifteenth century. From Apulia, Monopoli, San Stefano.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Dr. Eliot Hubbart, inv. no. 37.410. (Photo: 2014 Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston.)

fairly securely assume that devotional panels, wall paintings, and altarpieces from
major churches in the urban centers of the island would undoubtedly have served
as models for the numerous commissions undertaken by Cretan painters.26
In the case of St. Stephen, who was equally popular in Byzantium and in
Western Europe, choosing the late Gothic style for his portrait on the Apulian altar-
piece was undoubtedly a conscious choice on the part of the patron, who preferred
for the figure of the dedicatory saint of the church a version more familiar to the
Catholic community of the monastery.27 In the early fifteenth century the Hospital-
lers commissioned what was by Italian standards a precious Byzantine devotional
work that gave prominence to the orders strong ties with the East, from where all
the wonder-working devotional icons came. However, the Hospitallers retained
the Catholic character of the altarpiece by including St. Augustine in the program
and choosing for St. Stephen a late Gothic form of depiction. In the case of this
polyptych the deliberate artistic bilingualism, in depicting the figures, in order to
emphasize at the same time the Eastern provenance and the Western destination of
the monumental composition, is particularly striking and equally eloquent.
48 Anastasia Drandaki

A completely different but equally interesting case as regards the ways of

implementing and the motives for using the maniera greca in the fifteenth cen-
tury is represented by the well-known Madonna of Cambrai, from the eponymous
cathedral (Fig. 6). The history and the importance of this icon are well known and
have been comprehensively studied by Jean Wilson and Maryan Ainsworth, among
others.28 An Italo-Byzantine Virgin of Tenderness of the mid-fourteenth century, a
work which most likely no Byzantine of the period would have recognized as a
Greek icon, was bought in Rome a century later and transferred to the cathedral of
Cambrai, where it was received and promoted as a genuine Byzantine work and
indeed an original creation attributed to the hand of the evangelist Luke.29 Jean
Wilson has convincingly explained the political motives behind the exploitation
of the icon as a wonder-working Byzantine archetype, in the context of the efforts
of Duke Phillip the Good to promote a crusade to liberate the Byzantines from the
Ottomans. The story of Philips nephew, the count of Estampes, commissioning
copies of the icon from Hayne of Brussels and Petrus Christus is very well known,
so there is no need for me to go into any details here.30 What is interesting to note
in the context of this discussion is that in the mid-fifteenth century in Burgundy the
iconographic type, the gold ground, and the icons provenance in Rome, no longer
directly from the East, were enough to guarantee the Byzantine pedigree of the
work in the minds of the congregation and to give it the status of a relic and symbol
of the conquered Byzantium.
From the evidence presented so far, the time frame within which we can
or shouldexamine the historical phenomenon of the maniera greca seems to
far exceed its normally allotted span, which pronounces it clinically dead in the
early fourteenth century, with the emergence of the radical new tendencies in Ital-
ian painting. The art theorists of the Renaissance used the term maniera greca to
describe an art historical phenomenon of the past, a stage in the history of Italian
art marked by the influence of Byzantine painting, from which they wished to
distance themselves and the spectacular artistic achievements of their time.31 But
it goes without saying that the rapid pace in certain circumstances at which the
avant-garde in art evolves and is transformed by no means implies the simultane-
ous elimination of earlier tendencies and styles, because basically the needs which
these earlier characteristics met and the social dynamics which were expressed in
their reproduction still existed. In our case it seems that it was the preaching of cer-
tain monastic circles that played a decisive role in the continuous demand for Byz-
antine or Byzantinizing icons in Italy, as testified by the preaching of Dominici and
the complaints by Armenini, mentioned above.32 The fall of Constantinople to the
Ottoman Turks in 1453 added another reason, political this time, for the renewal of
interest in Greek icons. The Virgin of Cambrai is just one illustrious example, but
it is worth remembering that the mass commissions to Cretan workshops for icons
 A Maniera greca 49

Fig. 6. The Cambrai Madonna (Notre-Dame de Grce). ca. 1340. France, Cathedral of Cambrai.
(Photo: Restored Traditions.)
50 Anastasia Drandaki

in the Greek manner reached their peak in the second half of the fifteenth century.
I have argued in the past that the flow of Cretan icons to Italy precisely during that
period can be understood in this political climate that amplified the respect for and
veneration of Byzantine culture in general and icons in particular.33
By bringing into the discussion of the content and context of the term
maniera greca the evidence from this later periodthat is, the testimony of the
Cretan icons, on the one hand, and the modes of ideological exploitation of Byz-
antine or Byzantinizing icons in the West, on the otherthe disparaging approach
of Renaissance art historians like Armenini and Vasari may take on an added layer
of meaning. It is tempting to see their negative assessment of the Greek manner
not only as an unfavorable evaluation of an artistic trend of the past, surpassed and
forgotten under the triumph of the Renaissance, but also as an expression of dis-
dain towards a persisting predilection for old-fashioned icons, a predilection that
according to the evidence from the Cretan icons still affected a significant propor-
tion of the art market, even in this late period.
So far, I have discussed aspects of the term maniera greca that depart from
the common time frame of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, but I have
remained focused on its traditional geographical area, Italy, and with the example
of Cambrai, in Burgundy/Flanders. Most of the examples I discussed can indeed
be described as Italo-Byzantine, the style traditionally related to the maniera greca.
I referred to paintings that demonstrate different modes of appropriation of Byz-
antine elements, the Cambrai Madonna and the San Stefano altarpiece, commis-
sioned or used by Western clients to answer their devotional needs and serve their
political and ideological agendas. It is precisely the needs and purposes of those
clients that make the eclectic artistic physiognomy of such paintings meaningful.34
This approach applies of course not only to works created for or used by
Latins in Western Europe but also to paintings of an equally mixed, multifarious
style made for the multinational and doctrinally diverse population in the East. The
two phenomena, the so-called maniera greca and hybrid works created in the East,
have been interpreted by many scholars in the past decades as interrelated artistic
expressions of the encounter between Byzantium and the West,35 an encounter that
acquired new dynamics and ideological orientations after the Fourth Crusade.
However, with respect to the icons, despite the rich material at hand and the
equally rich and diverse approaches in the literature, we still struggle to classify
them and to understand the mechanisms that control their multiple variations. Our
bafflement is all the more in evidence when we try to categorize panels for which
we have no real indication of provenance, use, maker, or patronwhich, unfortu-
nately, is quite often the case. The problem is amply demonstrated by the biblio-
graphical history of the famous panels in the National Gallery of Washington, DC,
the Kahn and the Mellon Madonnas, with its series of attributions to painters and
 A Maniera greca 51

artistic centers and the different labels under which the panels appear. Preeminent
scholars like Bernard Berenson, Victor Lazarev, Hans Belting, Jaroslav Folda, and
Rebecca Corrie have contributed to a rich, ongoing debate on these captivating
paintings.36 Launched one after another, maniera greca, Crusader art, lingua franca,
and maniera cypria are all terms whose legitimacy then comes to be doubted and
their adequacy to define such a fluid, multifarious artistic content questioned.37
To paraphrase Anthony Cutler, as long as we are unable to identify whose needs
and interests such works answered, the full interpretation of their character will
continue to elude us.38
In the second part of my paper I will shift my focus from West to East and
contribute to this debate by briefly discussing two painted compositions that defy
established art historical labels. The paintings betray different modes of appropria-
tion and amalgamation of Italian and Byzantine elements, and at the same time
offer us solid information regarding the environment in which they were made and
the audience they addressed.
The first example comes from the Monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai. The
angel, which so impressed the President of the Hellenic Republic, comes from a
Deesis composition from which Gabriels companion, the Archangel Michael, and
the two chief apostles, Peter and Paul, also survive39 (Fig. 7). The two apostles
have been published by Kurt Weitzmann, who described them as a master set
because he believed that they were the models for a series of copies in the monas-
tery.40 But I think otherwise. These Deesis icons are monumental panels (Michael:
105 x 75 cm; Gabriel: 104.5 x 70 cm; Peter: 105.7 x 71.1 cm; Paul: 104.3 x 69.8
cm). There is no doubt that they all come from one composition, since not only
the dimensions and the stylistic details but also the decoration on the reverse are
identical on all four works.41 These four Deesis icons were exhibited as a group in
Byzantium 3301453 in the Royal Academy of Arts in 20089.42 In his entry for
the exhibition catalog Robin Cormack tentatively adds to the group of the four
Deesis icons a sanctuary door with the Annunciation, suggesting they could all
come from the same iconostasis.43 This appealing hypothesis remains open, until
a systematic examination of all five works can be conducted. From my brief study
of the sanctuary door, I formed the opinion that though close in style and iconogra-
phy, it does not share the meticulous, calligraphic workmanship of the four Deesis
panels. As for certain shared iconographic details, like the angels hairbands with
the large pearl-studded ruby in the middle, they do not offer conclusive evidence
of a planned grouping, as these commonly held details appear frequently on thir-
teenth-century angelic representations in Sinai44 (Fig. 9). Therefore, in the context
of this discussion I will remain focused solely on the Deesis icons.
This Deesis, as I have maintained before, copies an earlier, smaller one at
the monastery, nowadays in a very poor state of preservation but from which the
52 Anastasia Drandaki

Fig. 7ad. Deesis with the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, and the apostles Peter and Paul. Byzan-
tine, second half of the thirteenth century. Sinai, the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine. (Photo: Spyros
Panayiotopoulos (ac) and Bruce White (d); reproduced by permission of the Holy Monastery of St.
Catherine, Sinai, Egypt.)
 A Maniera greca 53

figures of Gabriel, Peter, and Paul survive (Fig. 8).45 Despite extensive damage to
all three figures, it is still possible to discern the exceptional quality of the painting.
Late Comnenian reminiscences are still strong in the rendering of the figures, but
the fleshy faces, soft painterly modeling, and intensely humane introspection of the
expressions link them with the most outstanding Byzantine monuments of the first
half of the thirteenth century, such as the wall paintings in Mileeva (122228).46
The later, monumental Deesis that concerns us here copies the iconography of the
earlier composition down to the last detail, but despite the faithful copying, the
new icons are characterized by a meticulous calligraphic quality and cannot avoid
the academic line which distinguishes them from the contemplative feel of their
models (Fig. 9). The talented painter of the later Deesis also reveals a different
approach to the rendering of volume, displayed in the manner of painting certain
detailsas, for example, the ends of the angels headbands, where the transpar-
ent, ethereal modeling of the earlier work has been replaced by successive shades
of compact color. The modeling of the faces and the corporeality of the figures in
the monumental ensemble has close parallels in official Byzantine works of the
second half of the thirteenth centuryas, for example, in a wall painting in the
Vatopedi Monastery with the enthroned Virgin between angels, dated in the last
quarter of the thirteenth century (Fig. 10)47; and the Deesis mosaic in Hagia Sophia
in Constantinople (1261), a work whose links with contemporary Italian paint-
ing have been put forth.48 However, in the four Sinai panels the familiarity with
Western art, particularly with the pictorial vocabulary amalgamated in Crusader
lands, is even more pronounced. Innovative for Byzantine painting is the use of the
chiaroscuro in the rendering of the angels hands; another innovation is seen in the
halos of Peter and Paul, no longer the burnished reflective gold discs of the earlier
work but instead adorned with incised diaper motifs and punched dots, a decora-
tion of Western European origin, adopted by workshops in the Latin East.49 The
same technique occurs on other hybrid thirteenth-century icons created in Cru-
sader lands, like the central panel of a triptych with the Enthroned Virgin and Child
in Sinai,50 and the vita icon of St. Prokopios in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem.51
Even more telling for the character of the Deesis ensemble is the use of cer-
tain painterly means that though not unknown to Byzantine painting, are among
the distinctive characteristics of a group of panels attributed to workshops active in
Crusader Acre. The meticulous calligraphy of the angels hair, the pronounced use
of a vivid red line to highlight the upper lids of the eyes, and the intense delinea-
tion of human anatomy and wrinkles (particularly evident in the portraits of Peter
and Paul) are all features that betray close familiarity with the artistic vocabulary
employed in panels like the double-sided icon with the Crucifixion and the Anasta-
sis and the diptych with the Virgin Kykotissa and St. Prokopios, both in Sinai and
attributed to the same Acre workshop (Fig. 11).52 On the other hand, the design and
54 Anastasia Drandaki

Fig. 8ac. Deesis with the apostles Peter and Paul,

and the Archangel Gabriel. Byzantine, second
quarter of the thirteenth century. Sinai, the Holy
Monastery of St. Catherine. (Photo: Spyros Pan-
ayiotopoulos; reproduced by permission of the Holy
Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt.)
 A Maniera greca 55

Fig 9a. The Archangel Gabriel

from a Deesis (detail from
Fig. 8). Byzantine, second
quarter of the thirteenth cen-
tury. Sinai, the Holy Monas-
tery of St. Catherine. (Photo:
Spyros Panayiotopoulos; repro-
duced by permission of the
Holy Monastery of St. Cath-
erine, Sinai, Egypt.)

Fig 9b. The Archangel Gabriel from a

Deesis (detail from Fig. 7). Byzantine,
second half of the thirteenth century.
Sinai, the Holy Monastery of St. Cath-
erine. (Photo: Bruce White; reproduced
by permission of the Holy Monastery of
St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt.)
56 Anastasia Drandaki

Fig. 10. The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Angels. Wall painting, last quarter of the thirteenth
century. Mount Athos, Vatopedi Monastery. (Photo: From Efthymios N. Tsigaridas, The Mosaics
and the Byzantine Wall-Paintings, in The Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopaidi, vol. 1 (Mount
Athos: Monastery of Vatopaidi, 1998), 23435, fig. 193, reproduced by permission of the Holy and
Great Monastery of Vatopedi.)

technical execution of the profuse chrysography on the angels garments find their
closest parallels in other hybrid paintingsfor example, a Crucifixion in Sinai
related to Tuscan painting, and, above all, the Kahn Madonna in Washington, DC
(Fig. 12) works that share an equally discreet combination of Italian and Byzan-
tine elements as the monumental Sinai Deesis.53 But unlike these works, we know
where the Sinai Deesis was produced and where it was used. As, in my opinion,
the panels copy the earlier Deesis in the monastery, there can be no doubt that the
panels were also created there, to be used in the monastery itself. Kurt Weitzmann
believed that the Peter and Paul master set was part of the iconostasis in the
Katholikon or of one of the side chapels.54 If they were intended for a templon, then
their dimensions suggest the only likely place was the templon in the Katholikon.
It should be noted that the four surviving icons from this Deesis are still arranged
two by two on either side of the new templon, on the north and south walls of the
Katholikon.55 Nevertheless I should point out that the templon was not the only
place these icons could have been placed in the monastery. We must remember
that St. Catherines was never decorated with wall paintings, which means it would
have been possible to place the monasterys numerous and iconographically vari-
ous icons on the long, high walls and to move them around.
 A Maniera greca 57

Fig. 11a. The Crucifixion from a two-sided icon with the Anastasis on the back
side. Saint-Jean dAcre, ca. 1280. Sinai, the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine.
(Photo: Bruce White; reproduced by permission of the Holy Monastery of St.
Catherine, Sinai, Egypt.)
58 Anastasia Drandaki

Fig. 11b. The apostle Paul from a Deesis (detail from

Fig. 7). Byzantine, second half of the thirteenth century.
Sinai, the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine. (Photo: Spy-
ros Panayiotopoulos; reproduced by permission of the
Holy Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt.)

In any case we are evidently dealing with a monumental commission of an

official nature, intended for the monasterys Katholikon. The choice of an excep-
tional painter is consistent with the nature of the commission. His familiarity with
Italian painting and the subtle integration of decorative motifs from the Western
tradition, which had become fashionable in the East, is displayed in a coherent
pictorial language. The high quality, the somewhat academic character, and the
eclectic nature of the Deesis composition, which differ from other contemporary
Crusader icons, pose questions as to the background and training of this talented
artist. Among the several areas with which Sinai maintained close ties, I believe
Constantinople is the more possible candidate. As mentioned before, the angels of
the Deesis have affinities with the exquisite Deesis mosaic in the Hagia Sophia,
while no comparable work can be securely located in other contemporary artistic
 A Maniera greca 59

Fig. 12. The Virgin and Child Enthroned. Byzantine, probably Constantinople,
thirteenth century. The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Gift of Otto
Kahn (1949.7.1). (Photo: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.)
60 Anastasia Drandaki

Fig. 13. St. Romanos the Horse Healer. Wall painting, Taxiarchs in Goritsa, Lakonia (Peloponnese).
Second half of the thirteenth century. (Photo: Author.)
 A Maniera greca 61

centers, such as Cyprus. Furthermore, it is worth noting the presence in Constanti-

nople of a forceful personality from Sinai, in the late thirteenth century, when the
icons in question must have been produced. I am referring to the patriarch of Alex-
andria, Athanasios II, who was a Sinaite monk.56 He lived in Constantinople from
1276 and was a confidant of both Michael Palaiologos and his son Andronikos.
Moving for decades among the imperial circles of the newly recovered Byzan-
tine capital, Athanasios fits perfectly in the role of the mind behind the commis-
sion of the Sinai Deesis. Regardless of the validity of this hypothesis, the subtly
mixed stylistic idiom of the Deesis is entirely suited to an Orthodox monastery like
Sinai, which while keeping its dogmatic identity, had gained the protection of the
Latin ecclesiastical authorities in the early thirteenth century and received an ever
increasing flow of Latin pilgrims in the late thirteenth century.57
The second example I am going to use comes from the south of Greece, from
the region of Lakonia, 20 km from Sparta, near the village Goritsa. Unfortunately,
the monument is still unpublished, though its existence has been recorded in the
Greek literature since 1978.58 The church, dedicated to the Taxiarchs (archangels),
is cross vaulted, and the painted program has no hidden surprises.59 The iconogra-
phy of the scenes includes certain peculiarities characteristic of thirteenth-century
Lakonian painting, such as the detail of Christ Emmanuel in a fleece or cloud in
the scene of the Annunciation.60 The program also contains saints with strong local
cults, such as St. Romanos o Epi tin Sklepan ton Alogon, the horse curer, who
specialized in treating animals, particularly horses (Fig. 13).61
The good quality of the execution of these wall paintings and the highly
literate inscriptions reflect the variety of models at the disposal of the up-to-date
workshop that decorated the church, models which prove surprisingly multifari-
ous. Alongside the Byzantine figures of the full-length Mother and Child and the
Pantocrator, which stand in for icons on the masonry templon, monumental figures
of the dedicatory saints, the Taxiarchs Gabriel and Michael, are a source of some
surprise (Fig. 14). Tellingly, from among the range of models at the disposal of this
workshop, the patron selected the most Italianate solution for the churchs patron
saints (Fig. 15). Not only was an Italian model rolled out for their depiction but use
was also made of varying painting methods, which further distinguished the Tax-
iarchs from the other figures in the iconographic program, particularly in the green
shades of the underpainting. Regarding the style of the wall paintings in Goritsa, it
is also worth noting that the individuals the patron chose to honor above allthe
Virgin and Child, the Pantocrator, the Taxiarchs, and the mounted St. George
are decorated with relief halos, a feature we have come to associate mostly with
Cyprus and Syria-Palestine, but which have also been recorded in other Pelopon-
nesian monuments of the second half of the thirteenth century, to which period the
Taxiarchs church can also be dated.62 The plaster relief decoration on the halos in
62 Anastasia Drandaki

Fig. 14. The Synaxis of the archangels. Wall painting, Taxiarchs in Goritsa, Lakonia. Second half
of the thirteenth century. (Photo: Author.)
 A Maniera greca 63

Fig. 15. The Synaxis of the archangels, detail of Archangel Michael. Wall painting, Taxiarchs in
Goritsa, Lakonia. Second half of the thirteenth century. (Photo: Author.)

the Taxiarchs reproduces a variety of motifs, lozenges, and foliate scrolls, a com-
bination that appears on the raised halos of the Ryerson Diptych, a work probably
made in Acre.63
As regards an overall understanding of the decorative program, it is no
coincidence that the chief apostles, Peter and Paul, are depicted opposite the Tax-
iarchs in an equally prominent location, while on the blind niche at the west end
of the north wall an equestrian St. George is depicted on a monumental scale. The
distribution of equestrian saints in the monuments of the Morea in the thirteenth
century has been persuasively interpreted by Sharon Gerstel as evidence of the
cultural identity shared by the two communities, Greeks and Franks, in the mixed
society of the time.64 Next to the church entrance there is a full-length portrait of
another military saint, Demetrios, patron saint of the newly established imperial
dynasty of the Palaiologoi.65 Conspicuously, the new metropolitan church of Mys-
tras, decorated immediately after the recapture of the Byzantine capital by Michael
Palaiologos and the transfer of the local diocese from Sparta to Mystras (1262),
was dedicated to the saint.66 The politico-religious undertones behind Demetrioss
representation in the church of Goritsa becomes more evident if one takes into
64 Anastasia Drandaki

consideration that the saint is seldom depicted in Lakonian churches before the
time of Michael Palaiologos.67
Given that we are still awaiting publication of the wall paintings from this
monument, all that I can comment on in this respect is the conscious use in a
Lakonian monument with an impeccably Orthodox iconographical program, of
that same multifarious artistic language that we so often assume developed to meet
the needs of a Latin public, whether in Italy or in the Crusader East. But in this
case there is nothing to support such a hypothesis. The church, despite the com-
bination of models of diverse provenance, does not in any way betray doctrinal
deviations or ambiguities. The precise reasons behind the particular choices made
in its decoration will only become clear after the full publication of the monu-
ment. However, this albeit fragmentary presentation of the wall paintings raises
new issues to be resolved about the clientele for and the distribution of a mixed
Italo-Byzantine painting manner, issues not normally associated with the heart
of Byzantine Greece and its Orthodox population.

To sum up, in the first part of my paper I tried to test the chronological
boundaries within which we recognize and can study the phenomenon described as
the maniera greca. The sources themselves, as well as the extant works, oblige us
to broaden the field of research beyond the traditional content of the termi.e., the
Byzantinizing painting of thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Italy. Catholic
patrons continued to show interest in genuine Byzantine icon painting into the
fifteenth century, whether to use it in their devotional practices or to serve politico-
religious strategies. This continuous demand for icons alla greca may no longer
have affected artistic developments in Italy, with the exception of Venice, but it
triggered the surprising flourishing of the icons industry in Venetian Crete.
In the art historical literature, the maniera greca is associated with the Italo-
Byzantine style, an amalgamation of elements of Byzantine, Italian, and north
European origin, combined in a pictorial language that answered the needs of Latin
patrons in the West.68 The relation of maniera greca with art developed in the Cru-
sader East is being recognized and explored in modern studies, but the focus in
most approaches remains on Latin patrons and artists. In contrast, scholars like
Doula Mouriki, Lucy-Ann Hunt and, more recently, Annemarie Weyl Carr, Mat
Immerzeel, and Rebecca Corrie, have in their studies on the painting of the Cru-
sader kingdoms highlighted a new and powerful componentthe role of local art-
ists: Cypriots and Syrians, as well as those from the local Christian communities
of the Melchites and the Maronites, who made, commissioned, and received one
category of these paintings.69
In the second part of my paper I argued that it was the Greek Orthodox
who equally used the repertoire of various iconographical and stylistic solutions
 A Maniera greca 65

created by the clashes, rivalries, dialogue, and enforced coexistence with the Lat-
ins.70 Panels such as the Sinai Deesis demonstrate that compositions of mixed style
could find a prominent place in the Katholikon of an Orthodox monastery. From
a different angle, the discussion of this Deesis amply demonstrates the challenges
inherent in the study of the icons treasured in Sinai:71 fragmentary compositions,
works brought to the monastery at different times from different places of origin,
and presents and offeringsbut also some works that carry the stamp of local pro-
duction. In my view, local creations are not distinguished by any particular techni-
cal traitI do not think there ever was any such thing as an exclusively Sinaitic
icon technique72but because they copy older, highly venerated icons that already
existed in the monastery.
Lastly, I referred to an unknown monument, the Taxiarchs in Goritsa, Lako-
nia, because despite the little evidence we have, it adds a new piece to the rich
puzzle of thirteenth-century painting. In churches like the Taxiarchs, I believe
that the conscious matching of models of diverse cultural provenance is used in
order to serve the religious policy of the commissioner. In this respect it is worth
mentioning that Vassiliki Foskolou recently studied the dedicatory inscriptions of
some monuments in southern Greece, whose expressions bespeak of the align-
ment of a section of the local archontes with the political ideology of Michael
Palaiologos,73 the emperor whose pro-union policy became a burning issue for the
Orthodox population.74 Seen from this point of view, the mixed, multifarious fea-
tures of such monuments are transformed into a powerful message and are part of
not only an ongoing dialogue with the community to which they were addressed
but also with other monuments, which were serving similar or opposing strategies
at that time.

Notes

A version of this paper was presented at the conference Re-Defining Byzantium: Art and Thought
in the Byzantine World, at the Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, October 1415, 2011.
I thank the director of the Index, Dr. Colum Hourihane, for inviting me to speak on that occasion.

1. The exhibition Pilgrimage to Sinai, Treasures from the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine
(Benaki Museum, Athens, July 20September 26, 2004) presented icons from Sinai that had been
previously shown in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, as part of the exhibition Byzan-
tium: Faith and Power (12611557), curated by Helen C. Evans.
2. Vassilios N. Marinis in Byzantium: Faith and Power (12611557), ed. Helen C. Evans, exhi-
bition catalog (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004), 38485, no. 240; Anastasia Dran-
daki, The Sinai Monastery from the 12th to the 15th century, in Pilgrimage to Sinai, Treasures from
the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine, exhibition catalog (Athens: Benaki Museum, 2004), 3840,
fig. 2.4.
3. On the Kahn and Mellon Madonnas, see Rebecca W. Corrie, The Kahn and Mellon Madon-
nas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned in Italy and the East, in Images
of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot:
66 Anastasia Drandaki

Ashgate, 2005), 293303, with earlier bibliography and an overview of the scholars debate regard-
ing the Madonnas attribution.
4. Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wik-
sell, 1960), 2435; Hayden Maginnis, Painting in the Age of Giotto: A Historical Reevaluation (Uni-
versity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), cf. 2025.
5. See in particular, Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences; Ernst Kitzinger, The Byzantine
Contribution to Western Art of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 20
(1966): 2547, esp. 2529 and 4247; Hans Belting, The Byzantine Madonnas: New Facts about
Their Italian Origin and Some Observations on Duccio, Studies in the History of Art of the National
Gallery of Washington 12 (1982): 722; and Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence, A History of the
Image before the Era of Art (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 37076.
6. The bibliography on the maniera greca is vast. Works that consider its content in a broader
framework and approach the term critically include: Hans Belting, Zwischen Gotik und Byzanz:
Gedanken zur Geschichte der schsischen Buchmalerei im 13. Jahrhundert in Zeitschrift fr Kunst-
geschichte 41 (1978): 21757; Hans Belting, Introduction and Die Reaction der Kunst des 13.
Jahrhunderts auf den Import von Reliquien und Ikonen in Il Medio Oriente e l Occidente nell
arte del XIII secolo, Atti del XXIV Congresso Internazionale di Storia dell Arte, vol. 2 (Bologna:
CLUEB, 1982), 110, 3553; Belting, Likeness and Presence, 37076; Kurt Weitzmann, Crusader
Icons and Maniera Greca, in Byzanz und der Westen: Studien zu Kunst des europischen Mittelal-
ters, ed. Irmgard Hutter (Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1984),
14370; Robin Cormack and Stavros Mihalarias, A Crusader Painting of St George: Maniera
greca or lingua franca? Burlington Magazine 126 (1984): 13241; Anthony Cutler, La ques-
tione bizantina nella pittura italiana: Una versione alternativa della maniera greca, La pittura in
Italia: LAltomedioevo, ed. Carlo Bertelli (Milan: Electa, 1994), 33554; Rebecca W. Corrie, Coppo
di Marcovaldos Madonna del bordone and the Meaning of the Bare-Legged Christ Child in Siena
and the East Gesta 35, no. 1 (1996): 4365; and Rebecca W. Corrie The Perugia Triptych and the
Transmission of Byzantine Art to the Maniera Greca, Acts of the XVIIIth International Congress of
Byzantine Studies, Selected Papers, Main and Communications, Moscow, 815 Aug. 1991, vol. 3, Art
History, Architecture, Music, ed. Ihor evenko, Gennady G. Litavrin, Walter K. Hanak (Shepherd-
stown, WV: Byzantine Studies Press, 1999), 3556; Valentino Pace, Fra la maniera greca e la lingua
franca: Su alcuni aspetti e problemi delle relazioni fra la pittura umbro-toscana, la miniatura della
Cilicia e le icone di Cipro e della Terrasanta, in Il classicismo: Medioevo, Rinascimento, Barocco,
ed. Elena De Luca, Atti del Colloquio Cesare Gnudi (Bologna: Nuova alfa Editoriale, 1993), 7190;
and Valentino Pace Le maniere greche: Modelli e ricezione, Medioevo: I modelli, atti del convegno
internazionale di studi, Parma, 27 settembre1 ottobre 1999, ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan:
Electa, 2002), 23750; Holger Klein, Zwischen maniera greca und maniera italiana: Das Regens-
burger Gnadenbild und seine knstlerischen Vorbilder, Die Alte Kapelle in Regensburg (Munich,
2001), 93110; Ludovico V. Geymonat, The Parma Baptistery and its Pictorial Program (PhD diss.,
Princeton University, 2006), esp. 16067.
7. Evans, Byzantium: Faith and Power, 644.
8. Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Painting, Franciscan
Ideologies, and the Levant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1216.
9. See the fundamental studies by Manolis Chatzidakis who identified and dated correctly
icons made in Cretan workshops of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. Chatzidakis revised ear-
lier erroneous opinions that attributed these works to an Italian-greek school of painting active in
Italy, centered around Venice: Manolis Chatzidakis, Essaie sur lcole dite italogrecque prcd
dune note sur les rapports de lart vnitien avec lart crtois jusqu 1500, in Venezia e il Levante
fino al secolo XV, ed. Agostino Pertusi (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1974), 7281; Manolis Chatzi-
dakis, Les dbuts de lcole crtoise et la question de lcole dite italogrecque,
(Venice, 1974), 169211; Manolis Chatzidakis, La peinture des Madonneri
 A Maniera greca 67

ou veneto- crtoise et sa destination, in Venezia, centro di mediazione tra oriente e occidente

(secoli XVXVI): Aspetti e problemi, ed. Hans-Georg Beck, Manoussos Manoussacas, Agostino
Perusi, vol. 2 (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1977), 67490. See also Maria Constantoudaki-Kitrom-
ilides, La pittura di icone a Creta Veneziana (seocoli XV e XVI): Questioni di mecenatismo,
iconografia e preferenze estetiche, in Venezia e Creta: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi,
Iraklion-Chania, 30 settembre5 ottobre 1997, ed. Gherardo Ortalli (Venice: Istituto veneto di
sceinze, lettere ed arti, 1998), 459507; Anastasia Drandaki, Between Byzantium and Venice:
Icon Painting in Venetian Crete in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in The Origins of El
Greco, Icon Painting in Venetian Crete, ed. Anastasia Drandaki, exhibition catalog (New York:
Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, 2009), 1118.
10. Mario Cattapan, Nuovi elenchi e documenti dei pittori in Creta dal 1300 al 1500, Thesau-
rismata 9 (1972): 20235, cf. 21115, documents 68. For an overview of the archival documents
and their contribution in the study of the history of arts in Venetian Crete, see Maria Kazanaki-
Lappa, Z, , :
, in Venetiae quasi alterum Byzantium:
; , ed. Chryssa A. Maltezou (Athens: Greek Culture Foundation,
1993), 43584.
11. Drandaki, Between Byzantium and Venice. See also Olga Gratziou, A la latina:
, DChAE 33 (2012): 35768. I would like to express
my gratitude to Prof. Gratziou for sharing with me her paper prior to its publication.
12. Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, La pittura di icone; Drandaki, Between Byzantium and
Venice, 1416.
13. Viktor Lazarev had discussed the relation between the Italian maniera greca and the Cretan
school of painting, but erroneously attributed the Cretan icons painted a la latina to an Italo-Greek
school active in Venice in the fourteenth century; see Victor Lasareff, Saggi sulla pittura veneziana
dei sec. XIIIXIV, la Maniera Greca e il problema della scuola Cretese (IIo), Arte Veneta 20 (1966):
4361; and Viktor Lazarev, Storia della pittura bizantina (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1967), 40710. For
the critique by Manolis Chatzidakis, see n. 9 above.
14. Post-Byzantine icons remain outside the scope of most Byzantinists, with the exemption of
scholars from Greece and Russia. At the same time, the conservative character of these icons sets
them apart from Renaissance and early modern painting. Lately, however, there has been a stirring of
interest in icon production postdating the fall of Constantinople in 1453. See, for example, the recent
exhibition of the icons in the Menil Collection, published in an exemplary manner in Annemarie
Weyl Carr, Imprinting the Divine: Byzantine and Russian Icons from the Menil Collection, exhibition
catalog (Houston: Yale University Press, 2011).
15. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 33048.
16. The most interesting contract of this type is an agreement signed in 1499 between two mer-
chants, Giorgio Basejo and Petro Varsama, and three icon painters in the capital of Venetian Crete,
Candia (modern Herakleion), who agree to paint seven hundred icons of the Virgin, five hundred of
which in forma latina and the rest in forma greca. The painters had to follow specific models, and
the color palette employed on the icons was determined up to the smallest detail; Cattapan, Nuovi
elenchi. See also the detailed analysis of this contract in Gratziou A la latina.
17. Giovanni Battista Armenini, On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting, trans. and ed.
Edward J. Olszewski (New York: B. Franklin, 1977), 256: eccetto di pitture delle sacre imagini, le
quali erano la maggior parte quadretti di certe figure fatte alla greca, goffissime, dispiacevoli e tutte
affumicate, le quali ad ogni altra cosa parevano esservi state poste fuori che a muover divozione,
overo a fare ornamento a simil luoghi. First edition in Ravenna, 1587.
18. Klaus Krger, Medium and Imagination: Aesthetic Aspects of Trecento Panel Painting, in
Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in Art History 61
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 5781. Giovanni Dominicis preaching, written
68 Anastasia Drandaki

in 1401, was addressed to a noblewoman of Florence, Bartolomea degli Alberti; see Giovanni Domi-
nici, Regola del governo di cura familiare, ed. Donato Salvi (Florence, 1860), 13233. On Domi-
nicis pedagogical views, see Giovanni Battista, L educazione dei Figli nella Regola di Giovanni
Dominici (1355/61419) (Florence: Pagnini e Martinelli, 2002), esp. 12638.
19. On the presence of icons for private devotion in private houses in late medieval Italy, see
Victor M. Schmidt, Painted Piety, Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion in Tuscany, 12501400
(Florence: Centro Di, 2005), 90106.
20. Schmidt, Painted Piety, 23335.
21. Maria Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, :
, DChAE 17 (199394): 285302 (with earlier bibliography).
22. nthony Luttrell, Le origini della precettoria capitolare di Santo Stefano di Monopoli
in Fasano nella storia dei Cavalieri di Malta in Puglia: Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi
(Fasano 141516 maggio 1998), ed. Cosimo DAngela and Angelo Sante Trisciuzzi (Tarente,
2001), 89100 (repr. in Anthony Luttrell, Studies on the Hospitallers after 1306 [Aldershot: Ash-
gate, 2007], study no. XIV and Addenta et corrigenda, 5). For an overview of the relations between
the Hospitallers and Byzantium, see John W. Barker, Byzantium and the Hospitallers 13061421
in Bizanzio, Venezia e il mondo franco-greco (XIIIXV secolo), atti del Colloquio Internazionale
organizzato nel centenario della nascita di Reymond-Joseph Loenertz o.p., Venezia, 12 dicembre
2000, ed. Chryssa A. Maltezou and Peter Schreiner (Venice: Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e
Postbizantini di Venezia, 2002), 4163.
23. Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, , 29294.
24. Dimitra Kotoula in Maria Vassilaki, ed., The Hand of Angelos: An Icon Painter in Vene-
tian Crete, exhibition catalog (Aldershot: Lund Humphries in Association with the Benaki Museum,
2010), 1001, no. 16.
25. Maria Georgopoulou, Venices Mediterranean Colonies, Architecture and Urbanism (Cam-
bridge 2001), 144. For the church of San Salvatore of the Augustinians, Olga Gratziou,
: (Heraklion: Crete Univer-
sity Press, 2010), 3440.
26. Anastasia Drandaki, Greek Icons 14th18th Century: The Rena Andreadis Collection
(Milan: Skira, 2002), 5259; and Drandaki, Between Byzantium and Venice, 11. The same picture
is drawn from the architectural and sculptural remains of the Venetian period in Crete; see Olga
Gratziou, Cretan Architecture and Sculpture in the Venetian Period, in Drandaki, Origins of El
Greco, 1927; and Gratziou, , 2153.
27. For a typical Byzantine representation of St. Stephen, see, for example, the early fourteenth-
century icon in the Menil Collection (E. C. Schwartz, The Saint Stephen Icon, in Four Icons in the
Menil Collection, ed. Bertrand Davezac [Houston: University of Texas Press, 1992], 4655) or the
wall painting in the church of Ayios Ioannis Prodromos, in Kritsa, Crete, dated to 138990: Klaus
Gallas, Klaus Wessel, Manolis Borboudakis, Byzantinisches Kreta (Munich: Hirmer, 1983), 434, fig.
408 (dated erroneously in 1370; for the correct dating, see Ioannis Spatharakis, Dated Byzantine Wall
Paintings of Crete [Leiden: Alexandros, 2001], 13336.)
28. Jean C. Wilson, Reflections on St. Lukes Hand: Icons and the Nature of Aura in the Bur-
gundian Low Countries during the Fifteenth Century, in Robert Ousterhout and Leslie Brubaker,
The Sacred Image East and West (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 13246;
Maryan W. Ainsworth in Evans, Byzantium: Faith and Power, 58284, no. 349.
29. For a discussion on the creation of such legends in the Renaissance period, see Belting, Like-
ness and Presence, 34248; Michele Bacci, Il pennello dell Evangelista: Storia delle immagini sacre
attribuite a san Luca (Pisa: GISEM, 1998).
30. See previous note. See also Maryan W. Ainsworth, la faon grce: The Encounter of
Northern Renaissance Artists with Byzantine Icons, in Evans, Byzantium: Faith and Power, 54555
and 58486, no. 350.
 A Maniera greca 69

31. Anthony Cutler, The Pathos of Distance: Byzantium in the Gaze of Renaissance Europe and
Modern Scholarship, in Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America
14501650, ed. Claire Farago (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 2345 (repr. in Anthony
Cutler, Byzantium, Italy and the North: Papers on Cultural Relations [London: Pindar Press, 2000],
study no. vii, 12763); Maginnis, Painting in the Age of Giotto.
32. See nn. 1718.
33. Drandaki, Between Byzantium and Venice, 1314. Generally on the demand for Byzantine
manuscripts, paintings, and other works of art in Italy after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman
Turks, see Anthony Cutler, From Loot to Scholarship: Changing Modes in the Italian Response to
Byzantine Artifacts, ca. 12001750, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995): 23767; Robert S. Nelson,
The Italian Appreciation and Appropriation of Illuminated Byzantine Manuscripts, ca. 12001450,
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995): 20935; Maria Georgopoulou, Late Medieval Crete and Ven-
ice: An Appropriation of Byzantine Heritage Art Bulletin 77, no. 3 (Sept. 1995): 47996; Robert S.
Nelson, Byzantium and the Rebirth of Art and Learning in Italy and France, in Evans, Byzantium:
Faith and Power, 51523; Robert S. Nelson, Byzantine Art in the Italian Renaissance, in Anastasia
Drandaki, Demetra Papanikola-Bakirtzi, and Anastasia Tourta, eds., Heaven and Earth: Art of Byz-
antium from Greek Collections, exhibition catalog (Athens: Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Benaki
Museum, 2013), 32635.
34. Anthony Cutler, Misapprehensions and Misgivings: Byzantine Art and the West in the
Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Mediaevalia 7 (1984): 4177 (repr. in Cutler, Byzantium, Italy
and the North, study no. xvii, 474509, esp. 5089.)
35. See above n. 6; see also Valentino Pace, Presenze e influenze cypriote nella pittura duecen-
tesca italiana in XXXII Corso di cultura sull arte Ravennate e Bizantina, Seminario Internazionale
di studi su Cipro e il mediterraneo orientale (Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 1985), 25998; and
Valentino Pace, Modelli da Oriente nella pittura duecentesca su tavola in Italia centrale Mitteilun-
gen des Kunsthistorischen Intitutes in Florenz 44, no. 1 (2000): 1943; Michele Bacci, Pisa bizan-
tina: Alle origini del culto delle icone in Toscana, in Intorno al Sacro Volto: Genova, Bisanzio e il
Mediterraneo (secoli XIXIV), ed. Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti, Colette Dufour Bozzo, and Gerhard
Wolf (Venice: Marsilio 2007), 6378; Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land, From the Third
Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 11871291 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 51327;
Rebecca W. Corrie, Sinai, Acre, Tripoli, and the Backwash from the Levant: Where Did the Icon
Painters Work? in Approaching the Holy Mountain, Art and Liturgy at St Catherines Monastery in
the Sinai, ed. Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Robert S. Nelson (Turnhout, Brepols, 2010), 41548. On theo-
retical and methodological issues, see Cutler, Misapprehensions; Robert S. Nelson, Byzantine
Art vs Western Art, in Byzance et le monde extrieur: Contacts, relations, changes; Actes de trois
sances du XXe Congrs international des tudes Byzantines, Paris, 1925 aot 2001, ed. Michel
Balard, Elisabeth Malamut, Jean-Michel Spieser (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2005), 25570;
Jean-Michel Spieser, Art byzantin et influence: Pour l histoire d une construction, Balard, Mal-
amut, and Spieser, Byzance et le monde extrieur, 27088.
36. For an overview of this debate see Corrie, Kahn and Mellon Madonnas; see also her entry
in Evans, Byzantium: Faith and Power, 47677, no. 286.
37. For a review of the different terms used by scholars, see Folda, Crusader Art, 51327. On
Crusader art, see also Titos Papamastorakis, The Crusader Icons in the Exhibition, in Drandaki,
Pilgrimage to Sinai, 4663.
38. Cutler, Misapprehensions.
39. Drandaki, Sinai Monastery. Yuri Piatnitsky was the first to group the two icons of the
archangels with the apostle Peter, in Sinai, Byzantium, Russia: Orthodox Art from the Sixth to the
Twentieth Century, ed. Yuri Piatnitsky, Oriana Baddeley, Earleen Brunner, Marlia Mundell Mango,
exhibition catalog (London: Saint Catherine Foundation, 2000), 25051, no. S62.
Maria Aspra Vardavakis proposes a different context for the Peter and Paul icons, grouping them
70 Anastasia Drandaki

with a Christ Pantocrator and a Virgin in Intercession, but the latter pair, though clearly also part
of a Deesis composition, is in my opinion undoubtedly earlier, has different stylistic and technical
characteristics, and varying dimensions; see Maria Aspra Vardavakis, Three Thirteenth-Century
Sinai Icons of John the Baptist Derived from a Cypriot Model, in Medieval Cyprus, Studies in Art,
Architecture and History in Memory of Doula Mouriki, ed. Nancy Patterson-evenko and Christo-
pher Moss (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 17993.
40. Kurt Weitzmann, The Saint Peter Icon of Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, DC: Dumbarton
Oaks, 1983), 18, 3334, figs. 15, 3334.
41. A photograph of the back side of the Archangel Gabriel is published in Evans, Byzantium:
Faith and Power, 385. All four panels repeat the same pattern (personal observation).
42. Robin Cormack in Byzantium 3301453, ed. Robin Cormack and Maria Vassilaki, exhibi-
tion catalog (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2008), 37073, 461, nos. 31821.
43. Ibid, no. 322.
44. Georgi Parpulov, Mural and Icon Painting at Sinai in the Thirteenth Century, in Gerstel
and Nelson, Approaching the Holy Mountain, figs. 104, 111, 114, 116.
45. Kurt Weitzmann, Icon Programs of the 12th and 13th Centuries in Sinai, DChAE 12
(1984): 63116.
46. Svetozar Radojci, Mileeva (Belgrade: Srpska knjizevna zadruga, 1963), pls. vi, ix, xi, xvii,
xxiii.
47. Efthymios N. Tsigaridas, The Mosaics and the Byzantine Wall-Paintings, in The Holy and
Great Monastery of Vatopaidi, vol. 1 (Mount Athos: Monastery of Vatopaidi, 1998), 23435, fig. 193.
48. Robin Cormack, The Mother of God in the Mosaics of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople, in
Mother of God, Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki, exhibition catalog
(Milan: Skira Editore, 2000), 10723, esp. 11823.
49. Mojmir Frinta, An Investigation of the Punched Decoration of Medieval Italian and non-
Italian Panel Painting, Art Bulletin 47, no. 2 (1965): 26164.
50. Jaroslov Folda in Evans, Byzantium: Faith and Power, 35759, no. 216; Papamastorakis,
Crusader Icons, 56.
51. Georgios Tsantilas,
, DChAE 27 (2006): 24558; Titos Papamas-
torakis, Pictorial Lives: Narrative in Thirteenth-Century Vita Icons, Mouseio Benaki 7 (2007):
3365, esp. 4649.
52. Folda, in Evans, Byzantium: Faith and Power, 35556 and 36667; Papamastorakis, Cru-
sader Icons, 5759.
53. On the Sinai Crucifixion, see Helen C. Evans in Evans, Byzantium: Faith and Power, 367
68, no. 224; on the Kahn Madonna, Corrie, Kahn and Mellon Madonnas.
54. Weitzmann, Saint Peter Icon, 33; and Kurt Weitzmann, Icon Programs of the 12th and 13th
Centuries at Sinai, DChAE 12 (1984): 8694
55. Kurt Weitzmann remarks that the Peter and Paul icons are kept together today in the
room north of the bema, next to the modern seventeenth-century iconostasis of the Katholikon;
Weitzmann, Saint Peter Icon, 33.
56. On Athanasios, see Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit, ed. Erich Trapp et
al., vol. 1 (Vienna: Verffentlichungen der Kommission fr Byzantinistik I/1, 1976), 3738, no. 413;
Albert Failler, Le sjour d Athanase II d Alexandrie Constantinople, Revue des tudes byzan-
tines 35 (1977): 4371.
57. Georg S. J. Hofmann, Sinai und Rom (Rome: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum,
1927); Bernard Hamilton, The Latin Church in the Crusader States: The Secular Church (London:
Variorum Publications, 1980), 31821; Drandaki, Sinai Monastery, 2836; and Anastasia Dran-
daki, Through Pilgrims Eyes: Mt Sinai in Pilgrim Narratives of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Cen-
turies, DChAE 27 (2006): 491504. See also David Jacoby, Christian Pilgrimage to Sinai until the
 A Maniera greca 71

Late Fifteenth Century, in Holy Image, Hallowed Ground, Icons from Sinai, ed. Robert S. Nelson
and Kristen M. Collins, exhibition catalog (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006), 7993.
58. Aimilia Giaouri, , Arch. Deltion 33 (1978): Chronika, 105;
Silas Koukiaris,
(Athens-Ioannina: Dodone, 1989), 65; Nikolaos B. Drandakis,
, Lakonikes Spou-
des 13 (1996): 181, no. 74; Giorgos P. Fousteris,
(PhD diss., University of Thessaloniki, Thessalonica 2006), 13638, http://
invenio.lib.auth.gr/record/66080/files/gri-2007-1016.pdf?version=1.
59. Fousteris, .
60. Nikolaos B. Drandakis, ? Epistemonike Epeteris Philosophikes Scholes
Panepistemiou Athenon 26 (1979): 25868; Chara Constantinides, O
(Athens 1998).
61. Ilias Anagnostakis and Titos Papamastorakis, St. Romanos epi ten sklepan: A Saint Pro-
tector and Healer of Horses, in Animals and Environment in Byzantium (7th12th c.), ed. Ilias
Anagnostakis, Taxiarches Kollias, Eutychia Papadopoulou (Athens: Ethniko Idryma Ereunon, 2011),
13764, esp. 14041, fig. 4.
62. Mojmr S. Frinta Raised Gilded adornment of the Cypriot Icons and the Occurrence
of the Technique in the West, Gesta 20 (1981): 33347; Sophia Kalopissi,
K , in B
K , vol. 2 (Nicosia, 1986), 555560; Doula Mouriki, Thirteenth-
Century Icon Painting in Cyprus, Griffon 12 (198586): esp. 3248; Annemarie Weyl Carr and
Laurence J. Morrocco, A Byzantine Masterpiece Recovered, the Thirteenth-Century Murals of Lysi,
Cyprus (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), 98110.
63. Rebecca W. Corrie in Evans, Byzantium: Faith and Power, 479, no. 288.
64. Sharon E. J. Gerstel, Art and Identity in the Medieval Morea in The Crusades from the
Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. Angeliki Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh
(Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2001), 26385.
65. On St. Demetrios as patron saint of the Palaeologoi family, see Eugenia Russell, Saint
Demetrius of Thessalonica, Cult and Devotion in the Middle Ages (Oxford: P. Lang, 2010), 2021
and passim. See also the typicon of Michael VIII Palaiologos for the Monastery of St. Demetrios of
the Palaiologoi-Kellibara in Constantinople, in John Thomas and Angela Constantinides-Hero, eds.,
Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents: A Complete Translation of the Surviving Founders
Typika and Testaments (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2000),
123753.
66. Manolis Chatzidakis, o
, DChAE 9 (1979): 14374; Georgia Marinou, :
(Athens, 2002), 1934.
67. St. Demetrius has an equally prominent place, directly opposite to the entrance, in the church
of Hagioi Theodoroi in Kaphiona, Mani-Peloponnese, the most innovative and up-to-date painting
ensemble of the thirteenth century in southern Lakonia. According to the dedicatory inscription, the
wall paintings of Kaphiona were executed during the presence in the Peloponnese of the emperors
brother, the sevastocrator Constantinos Palaiologos (between 1264 and 1270): Nicholas B. Dranda-
kis, Les peintures murales des Saints-Thodores Kaphiona (Magne de Ploponnse), CahArch
32 (1984), 16375; and Nicholas B. Drandakis, (Athens,
1995), 70100.
68. Derbes, Picturing the Passion, 15872 and passim.
69. Mouriki, Thirteenth-Century Icon Painting, 9112; Lucy-Anne Hunt, A Womans Prayer
to Saint Sergios in Latin Syria: Interpreting a Thirteenth-Century Icon at Mount Sinai, Byzantine
and Modern Greek Studies 15 (1991): 96145; Erica Cruikshank Dodd, Christian Arab Painters
72 Anastasia Drandaki

Under the Mamluks, ARAM 910 (199798): 25788; Mat Immerzeel, Divine Cavalry: Mounted
Saints in Middle Eastern Christian Art, in East and West in the Crusader States: Context Contacts
Confrontations, ed. Krijni Ciggaar and Herman Teule (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 26586; and Mat
Immerzeel, Holy Horsemen and Crusader Banners: Equestrian Saints in Wall Paintings in Lebanon
and Syria, Eastern Christian Art in its Late Antique and Islamic Contexts 1 (2004): 2960; Annema-
rie Weyl Carr, Sinai and Cyprus: Holy Mountain, Holy Isle, in Gerstel and Nelson, Approaching
the Holy Mountain, 44978; Rebecca W. Corrie, Sinai, Acre, Tripoli, and the Backwash from the
Levant: Where did the Icon Painters Work? in Gerstel and Nelson, Approaching the Holy Moun-
tain, 41548.
70. For an overview of Byzantine art after the fourth crusade, see Panayotis L. Vocotopoulos,
ed., Byzantine Art in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, The Fourth Crusade and Its Conse-
quences, International Congress, March 912, 2004 (Athens: Akademia Athenon, 2007). For the
Peloponnese where Goritsa is located, see in the same volume Sophia Kalopissi-Verti, The Impact
of the Fourth Crusade on Monumental Painting in the Peloponnese and Eastern Central Greece up to
the End of the Thirteenth Century, 8288.
71. On the problem of attributions to Sinai, see the excellent assessment of methodological
approaches by Nancy Patterson evenko, Manuscript Production on Mount Sinai from the Tenth
to the Thirteenth Century in Gerstel and Nelson, Approaching the Holy Mountain, 23358, esp.
23339.
72. It has become a truism in the literature of the past decades that the reflective, burnished gold
discs and the decorative patterns painted on the back of many middle Byzantine icons in Sinai are
traits exclusive to icons made in situ. Obviously, this assumption is based on the lack of comparanda
from other parts of the Byzantine world. However, a recently restored twelfth-century epistyle from
the Vatopedi Monastery carries both features: the burnished gold halos on the obverse and circles
inscribed with pearl-studded crosses on the back (Eythymios N. Tsigaridas, Portable Icons, in The
Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopaidi, vol. 2 [Mount Athos: Monastery of Vatopaidi], 35161,
esp. figs. 29698, 301302). The epistyle was first studied by Manolis Chatzidakis, who published
a photograph of its back (Manolis Chatzidakis, , DChAE
4 (196465): 377400, pls. 7786, esp. pl. 86a). As Chatzidakis has observed, the decoration on
the back of the Vatopedi epistyle is the same as on a number of twelfth-century icons in Sinai: the
Annunciation, the Heavenly Ladder of St. John Climacus, and two tetraptychs. For the first two
icons, see Annemarie Weyl Carr and Kathleen Corrigan in The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture
of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 8431261, ed. Helen C. Evans and William D. Wixom, exhibi-
tion catalog (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997), nos. 246247. For the tetraptychs, see
Georgios Soteriou and Maria Soteriou, (Athens, 195658), fig. 171 (errone-
ously labeled as the back side of an icon with the Virgin and Child); and Mary Aspra-Vardavakis,
, DChAE 24 (2003), 21122.
73. Vassiliki Foskolou In the Reign of the emperor of Rome: Donor Inscriptions and Politi-
cal Ideology in the Time of Michael VIII Paleologos,DChAE 27 (2006):45562.
74. Gilbert Dagron, Byzance et lUnion, in 1274 - Anne charnire: Mutations et Continui-
ts, Actes du Colloque international du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Paris: CNRS,
1977), 191202; Donald M. Nicol, The Byzantine Reaction to the Second Council of Lyons, 1274,
Studies in Church History 7 (1971): 11346. Generally, on Michaels policy towards the West, see
the classical study by Deno John Geanakoplos, Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West, 1258
1262A Study in Byzantine-Latin Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959).