Хархаре Элени
Афинский национальный университет имени Каподистрии, Греция
The paper examines the influence of the Greco-Roman tradition on the work of a post-Byzantine painter who came into direct contact with Renaissance art. Ioannis Permeniatis was active in Venice, where he was recorded as a member of the Greek Confraternity in 1523, a few years after its establishment in 1498. His paintings are distinguished by a particular combination of elements derived from the Byzantine tradition with features adopted from Western art. The presence of the latter is especially strong in the landscape settings of his compositions, which replace the traditional Byzantine gold background.
Some recurring elements of his landscapes, such as shepherds and sheep, castles and rustic buildings, masses of leafy trees and atmospheric distances, are typical of the pastoral type of landscape, which was popular in the Venetian painting of the first decades of the 16th century, as exemplified in the paintings of Giorgione and Titian and the engravings of Giulio and Domenico Campagnola.
The emergence of pastoral painting in Venice was stimulated by the revival of the pastoral poetry of Classical antiquity. Theocritus’ Idylls, published in the original Greek, and primarily the Latin pastoral of Virgil’s Eclogues provided the models for this revival, while the Neapolitan poet Jacopo Sannazaro’s Arcadia, which was published in the vernacular, led to the wide diffusion of the pastoral mode.
The idyllic settings described in poetry and represented in painting reflected the need of the Renaissance man for a peaceful and pleasant refuge from the problems of urban life. This appreciation of the countryside is one aspect of the wider rediscovery of nature in the Renaissance, a phenomenon deeply rooted in ancient Greek and Roman culture. Another interrelated aspect is the appreciation of landscape painting, promoted by classical texts such as Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which provided evidence for landscape painting in antiquity. According to Alberti, for example, the sight of painted landscapes is a source of immeasurable joy.
Ioannis Permeniatis, by following the established artistic practice of imitatio, adopted popular Venetian models and created his distinctive “delightful landscapes”, thus linking post-Byzantine painting with Renaissance art and classical tradition.