2015 Eastern Christian Art

Panagiotis Vokotopoulos

Academy of Athens, Greece

During the 15th–17th centuries the Greek island of Crete, then a Venetian colony, developed a school of painting stemming from the Palaeologan tradition but enriched by stylistic and iconographic elements taken from the Italian Renaissance. The paper examines the channels by which Italian features were absorbed by Cretan painters, the importance of these features, which varied from painter to painter and from period to period, the dogma to which belonged the artists, the nationality and social status of the sponsors, the geographical area where Cretan works were exported, new subjects adopted by Post-Byzantine artists, the framing of paintings and several other aspects of this refined art which vanished with the Conquest of the island by the Ottomans in the late 17th century.

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Sergey Klyuev

Research Institute of Theory and History of Architecture and Urban Planning, Russia

The theme of a cross takes a special place in interior decoration of the rock-hewn churches of Ethiopia. It has different forms. Crosses on the pole-form base were cut on the both sides of exit from naos space in churches of “tygranian cross-in-square” type. These crosses could take a place on the pillars in other types of churches. Variations of cross forms and aspects of cross relief location in church space are demonstrated in the report. The author draws parallels with church reliefs in other regions.

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Svetlana Tsymbal

Russian State University for the Humanities, Russia

Depiction of architectural landscape as a symbol of oecumene played an important role in the Hellenistic art. It was adapted by the medieval culture with new meanings, like many other elements of antiquity. S. Ćurčić and H. G. Saradi mentioned the special role of architecture in Byzantine painting as means of expressing certain Christian dogmas. Thus, an image of a church represents a “container of uncontainable” (S. Ćurčić), images of cities are symbols of imperial prosperity and rich architectural backgrounds are links to the greatness of Rome (H. G. Saradi). The landscape becomes a vehicle of a peculiar language which alters in style together with its epoch. Architectural backgrounds reach their expanded, fantastic forms and articulate the core semantic points of compositions in the Palaeologan era. The architectural settings are notably picturesque in the paintings of the church of the Virgin Pantanassa in Mistra (1428). We made an attempt to clarify a semantic role of the landscapes, to analyze the stylistic solutions in the context of Palaeologan art. Along with the general interest in antiquity and Byzantine traditions, there is also evidence of contacts with Western medieval culture. It appears in some compositional peculiarities and stylistic trends which evoke Italian paintings of the early Renaissance. After the Latin conquest western motives appear in some other Palaeologan paintings, especially in the areas where connections with the West were very close.

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Svetlana Maltseva

Saint Petersburg State University, Russia

Right from the time of its formation in the late 12th–13th centuries, in the time of its heyday in the 14th century and during its last flourishing in the late 14th — first half of the 15th century Serbian architecture always combined Byzantine and Western European elements with the local ideological concepts which marked the originality of the national architectural tradition. My paper will focus on Serbian architecture of the late period. While Byzantine traditions were predominating both in typology and style of church buildings, Western influences manifested themselves in some particular elements, mainly decorative. At the same time, there are some monuments of particular importance where Western influence penetrated much deeper and affected both the compositional and structural elements. One of the most interesting examples of such a synthesis is the church of Pantocrator at Dečani. The exterior of the church looks typical of the so called Raška school, yet in the interior the local traditions are transformed by late gothic forms. In the first quarter of the 15th century, when the ideas of Renaissance reached the Balkan littoral, masters coming from this region were engaged in constructing the church at Resava monastery. While preserving typically Byzantine composition of the five-domed church, the masters create new accents in the proportions and decoration of the church. Although in recent works by some prominent specialists late Serbian architecture is viewed as merely one of local variations of Byzantine tradition, we can’t discard the Western influences. These issues will be discussed in more detail in my paper.

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