The extraordinary decorative ensemble in Chora Church includes a fragmentary mural painting (Fig. 5.1) that has generally been met with surprise, even puzzlement, in the scholarly debate.
Chora Church/Kariye Camii, Istanbul, exonarthex, tomb G: Aristocratic Layman Standing before the Virgin and Child Enthroned, mural painting, c.1450
Photo: Michele Bacci
Since the very moment of its rediscovery in the second bay (so-called ‘tomb G’) of the west wall of the outer narthex, researchers have acknowledged its stylistic eccentricity vis-à-vis the other figurative components of the pictorial complex, which came soon to be celebrated as the most important such complex from Palaiologan times.1 Indeed, tomb G stood out distinctly for its idiosyncratic stylistic features, its approach to spaces and bodies resonating more closely with the arts of the Italian Renaissance than with Byzantine visual habits.
Even though only its lower portion has been preserved, its compositional and iconographic structure is easy to recognize. On the right, it displays an elegantly clad lay figure, wearing a richly decorated, charcoal-coloured caftan, tied at the waist, under a black, long-sleeved mantle. From these clothing details, we infer that this is a male figure.2 He stands on a perspectivally rendered floor of grey-veined marble before the enthroned Mother of God, rendered in a foreshortened view. Mary is seated on a red cushion within a wooden chair with a tall back and curved armrests. The base of the throne, which is decorated with floral motifs on its narrower side and with a rounded window at its front, is not directly connected to the nearby suppedaneum, embellished with recessed panels that are rectangular in shape. The Virgin wears a long, purple mantle characterized by gently twisting hems and voluminous, concentric folds that cling to and make visible the underlying body. Oddly enough, the Christ Child, whose ochre-golden himation compels the beholder’s attention, rests atop both of his mother’s knees. Most likely, the green appearance of the background is the result of gradual oxidation of azurite pigment, and thus it can be assumed to have originally been blue in colour. The composition is delimited by a red and white frame.
In most cases, scholars have stressed the naturalistic qualities of this image: the way in which it simulates the material setting of figures in space; avoids any dimensional shift between human and sacred persons; fictively evokes the figures’ bodily presence; and, in the treatment of clothing, imitates the materiality and ornamentation of real textiles. Paul A. Underwood had no doubts that “this is the first painting found in Constantinople in which clear-cut and precise evidence of direct Renaissance influence can be observed.”3 For Cyril Mango, tomb G “transports us into a different world,” on account of its Italian style.4 Viktor Lazarev concluded that the outstanding Quattrocento features of the image were enough to rule out the authorship of a Greek painter and pointed to the activity of an Italian master in Chora Monastery shortly before the fall of Constantinople.5 Meanwhile, Robin Cormack described this fragment as the most evident witness to the skilful capacity of Byzantine artists to appropriate and reproduce the pictorial conventions and techniques of others6 – in this case, the features of mid-15th-century Florentine painting.7
In essence, all these interpretations stress the visual distinctiveness of the composition – in terms of its temporalities and aesthetic attitudes – when compared to the surrounding mosaics. Its perspectival depiction of space seems at odds with the rest of the Chora’s decor, where the simulation of depth is interspersed with the rendering of built structures from different, and mutually contrasting, viewpoints.8 Tomb G departs from this multi-focal approach of Palaiologan painters in favour of the principles of linear perspective, creating the illusion of a three-dimensional environment defined by visual axes that converge at a geometrically constructed vanishing point. Additionally, a major difference can be detected in the use of light, which penetrates the composition from the bottom left, thus illuminating the narrower side of the throne, Mary’s legs, and the left half of the supplicant’s robe while leaving other areas in shadow (the front of the Virgin’s chair and suppedaneum, as well as the lay figure’s back side). This choice clashes with the penchant of Byzantine painters for chromatic balance as a unifying factor in the construction of visual forms.9
Despite its lamentable state of preservation, the Chora fragment provides a clear – albeit isolated – indication that optically deceptive solutions like those promoted by Italian Renaissance artists were appreciated and diffused also in 15th-century Constantinople. Even if a great many recent studies have managed to deconstruct the biased view that Byzantine arts had little interaction with the West, scholars are generally inclined to think that the encounter between Italian and Palaiologan forms was rather commonplace in Venetian-ruled Crete,10 in Hospitaller Rhodes,11 and in Lusignan Cyprus,12 but was much more episodical, and to some extent controversial, in the imperial capital.13 Undoubtedly, this perception is enhanced by the lack of any convincing comparison with Constantinople’s pictorial arts of the first half of the 15th century, which one must bear in mind are represented by very few artworks in situ. The bust-length figures of saints found in 1957 in the exterior arcades of the Atık Mustafa Paşa Camii, which can be dated to the 1430s or 1440s and were originally part of a decorative programme for burial spaces, look quite different in their strongly outlined draperies, their frontal poses, and their disproportionate bodies: accordingly, the two scholars who first published them deemed them completely unrelated in style to tomb G, despite its chronological proximity.14
In short, the composition in the outer narthex of the Chora contradicts our perception of Byzantine art as grounded in aesthetic – and ideological – principles that inescapably came into conflict with the optical simulation of nature so obsessively pursued by Italian artists. Standing out as a unicum, it has been described in various terms as a foreign ‘intruder’ into the artistic landscape of Constantinople, but the very fact that the composition proved to be the last pictorial work executed in the city before its fall to the Ottomans leaves interpreters with a number of disquieting, though mostly unexpressed, doubts: Does the composition indicate that a major change in taste took place among the Greek inhabitants of the Polis in their last decades of independence? And does this mean that an Italianate pictorial trend would have been developed locally, had the empire survived? According to Underwood, the image offered “an intimation of what [the artistic dialogue with Italy] might have been, had history taken another course.”15 In his view, the basic reasoning for such a shift was to be sought in the intensified exchange with Latin Europe in the aftermath of the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–39). This idea is shared by Liz James, who surmises that the adoption of a more naturalistic, Florentine-inspired style was in some way associated with the pro-Unionist ideology of an important sector of the Church and society of Late Byzantium.16
There is hardly any doubt that the council left a strong impact not only on politics but also on the cultural life and the figurative arts of the period: in Italy, it may have contributed to a renewed interest in icons,17 and, in the Greek-speaking realm, it may have sparked the dissemination of images that were meant to convey ecumenical messages, such as the icons displaying Peter and Paul embracing each other or jointly holding a model of a church.18 For the participants, the council offered an opportunity to observe and become acquainted with Italy’s newest artistic achievements, many of which were appreciated and in fact described with amazement. Orthodox visitors were struck by the beauty of profane and sacred buildings alike, as well as by the elegance of the gardens and the precious appearance of locally produced textiles. Meanwhile, they expressed surprise, even puzzlement, upon encountering the three strategies by which Italian artists managed to create the illusion of lifelikeness.
Among these three strategies, theatre was probably the most powerful. In Florence, the conciliar fathers were twice invited to watch a sacra rappresentazione: the Annunciation play staged in the Santissima Annunziata on 25 March 1439, and the Ascension play that took place in Santa Maria del Carmine on 14 May of the same year. In both cases, the sacred events were performatively re-enacted in a space shared by the beholders and actors. The latter fictively embodied the main personages of Christian history and simulated their material presence by speaking, moving, and gesturing, or even by hovering over the audience, as in the case of the funambulists who played the role of angels. The mise-en-scène was enhanced by painted sceneries, curtains opened and redrawn as needed, light and sound effects, fireworks, and a sophisticated machinery that enabled the staging of the descent of the Holy Spirit (in the form of a dove) on the Virgin Mary or of the vertical ascent of Christ towards heaven, accompanied by liturgical chants and a blaze of candles.19 This way of visually evoking sacred history did not go unquestioned within the Greek Church and was condemned by Simeon of Thessaloniki (c.1381–1429) as contradicting the Byzantine iconodulic doctrine.20 Nevertheless, despite its controversial status, the performance made a strong impression on its viewers: it was described as a “wonderful and terrific show” by Abraham of Suzdal, whose travelogue is still considered the most detailed written evidence to survive on Renaissance mystery plays.21
The second strategy for fictively simulating life was also connected with a public display, albeit one in which the performative role was played not by actors but by self-moving statues. To use Horst Bredekamp’s terminology, it corresponded to a “schematic image act,” where the illusion of presence was achieved through the physical animation of inanimate objects.22 This was the case, for example, with the mechanical clock embellishing the bell tower that dominated the central market square of Ferrara. This kind of monumental object, which was just the most recent outcome of a centuries-old fascination with automata, had grown very popular in Western Europe since the 14th century.23 At the tolling of the hour, a three-dimensional image of an angel emerged from a door, sounded a trumpet, and returned through another door. People were astounded by the convincingness of this fiction: as stated by the anonymous Russian author of Archbishop Isidore of Kiev’s travelogue, “one would say that [this angel] is really alive.”24
Figurative mimesis, whether in the medium of the plastic or pictorial arts, was acknowledged as another efficacious means to blur the distinction between visual appearance and material reality, as is most strikingly witnessed by the description, in Isidore’s account, of the wax ex-votos that crowded the church of Santissima Annunziata:
In that city is a miracle-working icon: a picture of the all-pure Mother of God. Before the image in its shrine are to be found 6,000 images, faithfully made of wax in the shape of people who were healed: if someone was wounded by an arrow, or deaf, or mute, or without hands, or if some eminent man came on horseback, they are shown that way in wax and stand as if alive: whether of advanced age or young, whether woman or maiden or infant, whatever they were wearing, or however their bodies were afflicted with illness, or however they were healed – it is shown right there in the figure.25
Images moulded in wax were, by and large, the most common type of ex-voto offering in the Latin Church. Traditionally, they were meant to materially surrogate individual votaries by means of analogical, synecdochical, or metonymic associations,26 but, in 15th-century Florence, their function as Ersatz bodies came to be frequently enhanced by the mimetic rendering of facial features, the simulation of life-size dimensions, the display of visual elements carrying narrative or memorial qualities, and the practice of dressing the statues in real clothing. Relying on an often-quoted passage in the 1568 version of Vasari’s Life of Verrocchio,27 art historians have long suspected that physiognomic verism first emerged in the medium of wax sculpture, before being transmitted to other artistic practices in a sort of trans-medial process.28 However, this view tends to downplay the specifically religious dynamics in which votive portraits were involved: regardless of their technical and material qualities, figurative images of the late Middle Ages increasingly came to exhibit individualized physiognomic features, inasmuch as these proved instrumental to ensuring and enhancing the recognizability of specific supplicants as penitents and beneficiaries of spiritual as well as material advantages.29
Nevertheless, physical presence was certainly emphasized by the wax medium. The fictive display of the gesture of self-dedication to the Virgin Mary, crystallized in three-dimensional replicas of the donor’s outward, fleshy appearance, was expected not only to arouse in the viewer empathic amazement as well as admiration for the piety and noble status of the depicted but also to remind the local Servite friars of their engagement in the regular performance of privileged prayers and masses for their benefactors. Perceptively enough, Orthodox visitors to Florentine churches clearly acknowledged that the use of materials and stylistic strategies to create the illusion of lifelikeness was specifically associated with statues meant to manifest the intensity of an individual’s act of submission to God (in keeping with the etymological meaning of the word devotion, from Latin devovere, ‘to offer’). On the other hand, it is symptomatic that these naturalistic features were not recognized as markers of images addressing religious themes. This difference is clearly emphasized, in the account of Isidore’s visit, by the expression
As far as we can judge from extant textual evidence, the Greek and Russian participants in the council were not scandalized, and were to some extent even pleased, by the sight of artworks and spectacles aimed at simulating living beings. If restricted to theatrical effects, automata, and votive portraits, the new Renaissance pursuit of the naturale could be easily perceived, by many if not by all, as unproblematic. The same held true for Western artworks displaying landscape views, which were praised in ekphrases by prominent members of the Byzantine political and intellectual elite, like Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos as well as the scholars John and Mark Evgenikos, despite the latter’s anti-Unionist positions.30 On the other hand, it can be assumed that the conciliar fathers would have been much less comfortable with images that treated sacred schemes in an optically deceptive way. Nevertheless, this specific aspect was never explicitly pointed out and was not on the council’s agenda: even in Gregory Melissenos’s often-quoted complaint, the images on view in Latin churches were criticized less for their style than for their iconographic idiosyncrasy and frequent lack of tituli, which hampered their immediate recognizability.31
The Orthodox delegation was responsible for at least one artistic initiative, the funerary monument of Patriarch Joseph II, which certainly does not reveal any special empathy towards the naturalistic achievements of Renaissance painting. Like Melissenos, the patriarch was a supporter of the Union. Nothing is known about his attitude towards Latin pictorial arts, but it is interesting to underscore that he was a relative of the painter Nikolaos Philanthropenos, who, at the beginning of the century, had established his atelier in Candia (Heraklion) in joint venture with the Venetian artist Nicolò Storlado, while also being active in Constantinople and Venice. A painted polyptych now in Boston, which stands out for its rendering of holy figures in a style combining Palaiologan approaches with the Gothicizing manner of Lorenzo Veneziano, has been suspected to be a work by Philanthropenos’s hand and thus to reveal his full conversancy – or that of early 15th-century Cretan artists in general – with different pictorial idioms, the blending of which was not really seen to be problematic.32
When Joseph II died in Florence on 10 June 1439, Emperor John VIII Palaiologos wanted him to be buried in the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, and another relative, Georgios Philanthropenos, made arrangements to ensure the regular performance of masses and anniversaries for the sake of his soul.33 Strikingly enough, the marble chapel (Fig. 5.2) erected in his honour, resembling an arcosolium, included sculpted ornaments that were fully in keeping with local Florentine practice, whereas his funerary portrait, as far as it can still be appreciated in its 16th-century repainting, was almost two-dimensional in character: shown in a perfectly frontal posture standing on a green ground, the subject wears episcopal insignia and is accompanied by a Latin epigram and a Greek inscription.
Santa Maria Novella, Florence: Funerary Portrait of Patriarch Joseph II, mural painting, 1451
Photo: Michele Bacci
Scholars have largely described this solution as Byzantine in appearance, and, accordingly, it has been deemed to be the work of a Greek painter, even if this assumption seems at odds with the handling of certain details, such as the red, golden-embroidered cloth held open by two angels behind the dead prelate’s back.34 This motif, undoubtedly typical of Italian and particularly Tuscan religious imagery since the 14th century, had already been introduced into the repertory of contemporary Cretan painting, as evidenced by an icon of the Virgin Enthroned made for a Latin confraternity in Candia around 1450 and now in the National Gallery in Athens.35
Nevertheless, whoever painted this image was probably aware that he was giving shape to a quite idiosyncratic composition. Contemporary funerary monuments in Italy placed much emphasis on the temporary splitting of a person’s unity into two parts in death, by simultaneously displaying the dead corpse as a gisant and the soul in the form of a living individual who kneels before the holy ones. This principle is best exemplified, a few steps away from Joseph II’s tomb, in Masaccio’s Trinity (c.1425–27), in which the beholder is invited to compare the skeleton lying on the sarcophagus lid with the two donors – a dead man and his widow – who manifest their self-dedication to God on the threshold between the simulated reality of the painted altar and the background space filled by the epiphany of divine presence.36 Full-length, standing, isolated figures of deceased persons are never encountered in funerary contexts within Renaissance painting, being certainly much more in keeping with Byzantine conventions, where, nevertheless, the deceased is normally shown in three-quarter view and engaged in a supplicatory dialogue with Christ or the Virgin Mary.37 The choice to represent the patriarch in a rigidly frontal posture and with a strongly two-dimensional effect was probably meant to convey a different message: in its awe-inspiring, icon-like appearance, the deceased prelate’s portrait was meant to be seen as a visual embodiment of the apostolic authority of the Greek Church itself.
If we now return to tomb G of the Chora (see Fig. 5.1), we are apparently faced with an unresolvable conundrum. How might we account for the fact that, during approximately the same period, members of the Byzantine elite made such different choices with regard to the decoration of their funerary monuments, with an Italianate style simulated in Constantinople and a Byzantinizing one adopted in Florence? As comparison of the two paintings self-evidently indicates, the selection of forms was conditioned by multiple factors, such as the commemorated person’s role in society, the specific viewing context, the association of the burial site with devotional and liturgical practices for the benefit of the deceased’s soul, and the distinctive dialogue each image was expected to establish with its beholder. There is scarce indication that the adoption of a Renaissance approach to the human figure would have suited the political agenda of the Unionist party: on the contrary, the latter’s members seem to have been committed to promoting more traditional visual conventions. Meanwhile, the Greek-speaking world was already familiar with the Italian repertory of forms, such that early Cretan painters drew upon them as needed, especially in the case of artworks like small devotional panels and funerary paintings that were meant to serve as visual supports for the religious practices of laypeople. Already in the mid-14th century, prior to the creation of tomb G, another burial space in Constantinople made use of a Western-type composition: to embellish a private side-chapel in the Latin church of St Paul of the Dominicans (present-day Arap Camii), a local Greek painter incorporated a scene of the Coronation of the Virgin in which Mary was shown wearing a Gothicizing blue mantle over a white robe and veil, along with a fleur-de-lys crown.38 One wonders whether, as was true in other Mediterranean contexts,39 the spaces reserved for the commemoration of dead people, and thus associated with private patronage, were privileged sites for the adoption of non-canonical imagery, including lifelike portraiture.
Unlike the marble chapel in Santa Maria Novella, the burial structure housing the Chora fragment was not isolated and self-contained but rather belonged to a sequence of funerary monuments erected since the previous century in the southern parekklesion and the outer narthex. In Metochites’s times, the latter space had been conceived of as an open portico; its arcades were later walled and transformed into arcosolia.40 In this way, these liminal parts of the church came to be more directly associated with the performance of liturgical activities for the spiritual benefit of dead individuals.41 The exact dating of such tombs and the identification of their specific ktetors are still matters of debate: many scholars follow Paul A. Underwood’s assumption that most of them were linked to relatives and close friends of Metochites,42 whereas other interpretations have recently been proposed by Emanuel Moutafov, with emphasis on the role of the Asan (or Asanes) family,43 and by Nicholas Melvani, who suggests that the erection of funerary monuments was more gradual and reflected the shifting patronal rights among different, though mutually interrelated, family groups. According to Melvani’s reconstruction, the outer narthex can be better understood as a privileged burial space for members of a specific branch of the Raoul-Asan clan, who were connected to both the Palaiologoi and the Dermokaites.44
Tomb E, located in the southernmost arcade of the exonarthex, was the first to be erected and decorated, around the mid-14th century. The family character of the composition is evidenced by its display of a group portrait, including adults and children as well as laypersons and people wearing monastic habits, one of whom is identified as a nun named Athanasia. It is possible that, in keeping with Byzantine practice, some deceased people may have been represented doubly, once in religious and again in profane attire. The figures are shown as supplicants below a half-length image of the Virgin Mary, and the medallions enclosing monograms of the Palaiologoi, Asans, and Raouls clearly identify their role in Byzantine society.45
The remnants of another group portrait can be found nearby in tomb F (Fig. 5.3), where a woman, man, and child were once depicted.
Chora Church/Kariye Camii, Istanbul: Funerary Group Portrait, mural painting, second quarter of the 15th century
Photo: Michele Bacci
The three figures, ostensibly a couple with their son, are characterized by their precious attire as lay aristocrats. The monograms embroidered on their clothing identify the woman as a member of the Dermokaites branch of the Asan family and the wife of a man from the Palaiologoi. It can be assumed that the two adults, seen in three-quarter view, were represented performing prayers for the sake of the soul of a deceased son, in front of a now-lost Marian image on the upper part of the wall. As recent scholarship has emphasized, Underwood’s conjectural dating of the composition to the mid-14th century clashes with certain stylistic and historical clues. For example, whereas the volumetric rendering of some folds indicates an interest in visually evoking the three-dimensional presence of the figure, the golden embellishments on the man’s red caftan feature patterns that strongly diverge from the Byzantine emblems on his mantle, corresponding instead to motifs that were widespread in Italian textiles from around the middle of the 15th century.46
In his investigation of trans-Mediterranean silk routes in the late Middle Ages, David Jacoby was the first to point out such clothing details, namely, as visual evidence of the pervasiveness of high-quality, foreign textiles in 14th- and 15th-century Constantinople.47 Extant sources indicate not so much that Byzantine elites had any special interest in contemporary Western fashion (indeed, few pieces of clothing were directly modelled on schemes used in Italy or France),48 but rather that they shared in a trans-national and trans-religious understanding of such luxury fabrics as symbols of social prominence and prestige. This is confirmed by the discovery in Mystras of a tunic used for the burial of a 15th-century Byzantine princess, made of elaborately patterned silk probably originating from Venice.49 Apparently, the traumatic events of 1453 did not hamper, but in fact further amplified, appreciation of such luxury materials: it is known that Italian, and especially Venetian, velvets and damasks enjoyed great success at the Ottoman court,50 coming quickly to be appropriated also by the Orthodox Church elites for the making of liturgical garments.51 As a paradigm of excellence, these fabrics were also frequently reproduced in post-Byzantine painted decor, as attributes of religious figures.52
The silks produced in 15th-century Italy made use of two main patterns: the griccia, in which the arrangement evokes flowers and branches, springing out of a central, sinuous trunk, and the cammino, characterized by symmetric rows of multi-lobed panels housing pomegranates, thistle flowers, and cones.53 The motif seen on the man’s vermilion caftan in tomb F can be easily recognized as one such cammino, with pomegranates surrounded by geometrically rendered foliage within eight-lobed panels. Not dissimilar is a variant encountered on the lay supplicant’s charcoal robe in tomb G: the specific way in which the ornament is structured on the fabric is of the ‘grid-like’ (a inferriata) type described by some 19th-century scholars.54 In keeping with this model, the multi-lobed ogees are aligned with slanting parallels separated by foliage, and they house clusters of pomegranates surrounded by branches of lanceolate leaves, the lowest of which is bound with a tie or ring. Such solutions, which would be developed in much more complicated designs during the second half of the Quattrocento, are typical of brocaded velvets (zetanini avvellutati) produced in the Venetian lagoon around 1450 (Fig. 5.4).55
Fragment of a Velvet Chasuble with ‘Cammino’ Ornaments, Venice, c.1450. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence
Photo: Paolo Peri, “8. Parte di pianeta di velluto,” in Fili d’oro e dipinti di seta. Velluti e ricami tra Gotico e Rinascimento, ed. Laura Dal Prà, Marina Carmignani, and Paolo Peri (Trento, 2019), p. 196
Much more than in tomb F, the richly decorated caftan in tomb G (see Fig. 5.1) is assigned a strong visual prominence. The deceased man, who is being received in paradise as he stands in front of the enthroned Virgin and Child, parades the precious Italian textile that signposts his belonging to Constantinople’s elite. Given the location of the tomb in the outer narthex, it can be assumed that he was a member of the Asan-Dermokaites clan, but, unlike all the other funerary images at the Chora, he alone is represented in the immediate presence of the Queen and King of Heaven. Whereas the adjacent group portraits place emphasis on the uninterrupted bond of kinship between the dead and living members of the same family, the last painting in the chronological sequence stages an individual soul’s encounter with God, without the mediation even of heavenly intercessors. Although images of saints may have been originally displayed on the side walls of the arcaded recess or the intrados of the arch, they were not directly integrated into the composition. Furthermore, the sacred figures and the supplicant not only share the same space but also the same scale, and they are ostensibly shown turned towards each other to emphasize their mutual interaction. Their physical presence is simulated in a similar, though not identical, way: whereas the commemorated person is given a solid appearance, enhanced by the tubular, parallel folds of his robe, Mary’s body is much less naturalistically evoked by the disproportionate gatherings of the maphorion wrapping her legs. Such voluminous folds, highlighted in white, are reminiscent of Gothicizing, rather than Renaissance, solutions that had already been employed in early 15th-century Cretan icons.56 Additionally, the throne and the suppedaneum do not exactly follow the laws of linear perspective, and one wonders whether this reflects the artist’s deliberate choice to differentiate the human from the divine sphere.
In a way, the Chora painting looks much more daring than any contemporary votive or pro anima image from either Eastern or Western Europe. In the Byzantine sphere, some examples are known of funerary paintings displaying an individual standing face-to-face with the enthroned Virgin and Child.57 In an icon from c.1360–70 preserved on the Croatian island of Korčula, both Mary and Jesus are rendered in three-quarter view with the aim of emphasizing their movement towards, and interaction with, an elegantly clad, young aristocratic lady, who is seeking visual contact with her heavenly protectors (Fig. 5.5).58
Confraternity of All Saints, Korčula (Croatia): A Young Lady Standing before the Virgin and Child Enthroned, icon, c.1360–70
Photo: Michele Bacci
Similar compositions are encountered in the arcosolium of the Serbian nobleman Ostoja Rajaković (d. 1379) in the narthex of the church of the Peribleptos in Ohrid (present-day North Macedonia; Fig. 5.6),59 as well as in a lunette-shaped icon that was lost in the 1934 fire at Megaspilaion Monastery, near Kalavryta in the Peloponnese, and may have originally been preserved in Constantinople (Fig. 5.7).
Sveti Kliment/Panagia Peribleptos, Ohrid (North Macedonia), arcosolium: The Governor of Ohrid, Ostoja Rajaković, Standing before the Virgin and Child Enthroned, mural painting, 1379
Photo: Michele Bacci
Funerary Icon of Ioannes Asan, c.1350–54. Formerly in Megaspilaion Monastery, Kalavryta (Achaea, Greece); destroyed in 1934
Photo: Titos Papamastorakis “Ioannes ‘Redolent of Perfume’ and His Icon in the Mega Spelaion Monastery,” Zograf 26 (1997), Fig. 1
The Megaspilaion icon is of particular interest here, as it bears witness to the patronage of this image type by members of the same aristocratic clan that was responsible for the tombs in the outer narthex of Chora Church. As revealed by an epigram displayed on the upper portion of the panel, the deceased was an adolescent named Ioannes who could boast of his kinship with the Doukas, Angeloi, Laskaris, Palaiologoi, Raoul, Tornikes, Philanthropenoi, and Asans, as well as of his imperial descent, emphasized by the medallions with double-headed eagles embroidered on his mantle. He was represented in a perfectly orant posture in immediate proximity to Mary and Jesus, who were shown turning towards the deceased with gestures that manifested their intercession and blessing. As convincingly argued by Titos Papamastorakis, the youth’s most probable identification is with John Asan, a brother of Irene Asanina, wife of Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, and, accordingly, the most probable dating of the icon is to c.1350–54.60
The aspiration of an individual (and his relatives) to partake of a privileged relationship with the Queen and King of Heaven in the hereafter was emphasized visually through the proximity of his or her portrait to the holy ones. Physical closeness could be easily understood as both an auspicious metaphor for a longed-for salvation in the afterlife and an ostentatious manifestation of piety, which presupposed the family’s, much more than the deceased’s, uninterrupted engagement in charity and other noble actions. The risk of excessively blurring the boundaries between the profane and sacred spheres was avoided by distinguishing the figures in terms of style (as in John Asan’s flat, uniformly white face as opposed to the chiaroscuro modelling of Mary and Jesus), bodily proportions, and/or the visual prominence ascribed to exuberantly decorated and eye-catching vestments.
The mural painting in tomb G conforms to the image type encountered in the above-mentioned Byzantine examples, but it differs from them in rendering both the human and otherworldly agents of the devotional dialogue within the same optically simulated, three-dimensional, and solid space. Its more naturalistic approach is, indeed, the only aspect to suggest, whether rightly or not, a similarity with Renaissance arts of Western Europe. Its typological, compositional, and iconographic features reveal no specific connections to individual portraiture in contemporary Western arts. As much as late medieval religious painting saw an unrestrainable intrusion of individual portraits, and though gradually the tendency diminished to differentiate donors from the addressees of their prayers via scale, commemorated people were nonetheless regularly not depicted standing but rather in a kneeling and supplicating posture, accompanied by one or more accompanying intercessors. Indeed, the staging of an individual’s unmediated and isolated encounter with Mary was rather rare. Such compositions appeared sporadically in manuscript illuminations meant for private devotion, such as in Books of Hours, but were normally avoided in the decoration of chapels and other altars associated with the performance of liturgical activities for the sake of the souls of individual donors, who were interested in visualizing their connection with otherworldly advocates and patrons.61
A notable exception is Jan van Eyck’s famous Rolin Madonna (1435) in the Louvre, which quite unusually displays its donor, the chancellor of Burgundy Nicolas Rolin, kneeling on a prie-dieu while facing the Virgin Mary within a perspectivally rendered, open loggia (Fig. 5.8).
Jan van Eyck, Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, oil on panel, c.1435. Musée du Louvre, Paris
Photo: RMN-Grand Palais, musée du Louvre/Gérard Blot
Originally meant to be the centre of the pictorial programme for the chapel erected by Rolin for the benefit of his soul, in the church of Nôtre-Dame du Châtel in Autun, it showcases the donor’s social and political dignity by accentuating the precious fabric of his robe, embellished with golden, griccia- like ornamentation. At the same time, it expresses his wish for salvation in the afterlife in terms of physical proximity to the holy. Contrary to earlier interpretations of this odd solution as a manifestation of unbounded egocentrism, recent studies indicate that the visual emphasis on the individual encounter with the holy figures aimed rather to convince the chancellor’s contemporaries, and probably also himself, that his non-aristocratic origins did not prevent him from behaving, and manifesting his piety, like a real nobleman.62
Comparison of this work to the composition in tomb G can be instructive and may, for example, help us overcome the lingering art-historical obsession with the taxonomic definition of Eastern versus Western. The images demonstrate both similarities and differences: they were meant for different beholders and different viewing contexts, but they both visualized an individual nobleman’s aspiration that his merits be deemed – by God but also by fellow humans – great enough to ensure his salvation in the hereafter. They also conveyed the belief that supplicants belonging to the highest social and political elites – whose privileged status was signposted in the images by the display of precious fabrics in widely appreciated Italianate styles – were much more easily exposed to mortal sin and were, therefore, in much greater need of assistance in terms of commemorative prayers and liturgical activities. Viewed from this perspective, the adoption of a representational approach aimed at evoking the physical presence of a human being, in part by staging his or her individualized appearance, can hardly be understood as the simple outcome of a painter’s fascination with visual cultures beyond Byzantium. It proves more useful to think of ‘expressive modes’ that, far from being mutually exclusive, could be alternated or combined. If the abstract, almost dematerialized rendering of Joseph II’s portrait in his Florentine tomb contributed to efficaciously underscoring his role as an embodiment of the Church itself, the naturalistic images of Nicolas Rodin and the Chora layman emphasized – in much the same way as the wax statues in the Santissima Annunziata – the embodied nature of the depicted’s sought-after, personal, and self-aware encounter with God.
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Otto Demus, “The Style of the Kariye Camii and Its Place in the Development of Palaeologan Art,” in The Kariye Djami, vol. 4, Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami and Its Intellectual Background, ed. Paul A. Underwood (Princeton, N.J., 1975), pp. 107–60.
As remarked by Sarah T. Brooks, Commemoration of the Dead: Late Byzantine Tomb Decoration (Mid-Thirteenth to Mid-Fifteenth Centuries) (PhD diss., New York University, 2002), p. 307. See also Maria Parani, Reconstructing the Reality of Images: Byzantine Material Culture and Religious Iconography (11th-15th Centuries) (Leiden, 2002), pp. 339–40.
Paul A. Underwood, The Kariye Djami (London, 1966), 1:294–95. See also Robert G. Ousterhout, The Art of the Kariye Camii (Istanbul/London, 2002), p. 88.
Cyril A. Mango, Chora: The Scroll of Heaven (Istanbul, 2000), p. 247.
Viktor Lazarev, Storia della pittura bizantina (Turin, 1967), p. 412, fn. 21.
Robin Cormack, Byzantine Art, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2018), p. 180.
Robin Cormack, “… and the Word was God: Art and Orthodoxy in Late Byzantium,” in Byzantine Orthodoxies, ed. Andrew Louth, and Augustine Casiday (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 111–20, esp. 117.
Anne Karahan, Byzantine Holy Images – Transcendence and Immanence. The Theological Background of the Iconography and Aesthetics of the Chora Church (Leuven, 2010), pp. 202–05.
Konstantinos Vapheiades,
See, among others, Maria Vassilaki, “Western Influences on the Fourteenth-Century Art of Crete,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 32/5 (1982), 305–11; Stella Papadaki-Oekland, “
Elias E. Kollias,
See esp. Ioanna Christoforaki, “
See the critical remarks by Robin Cormack, “
Thomas F. Mathews and Ernest J. W. Hawkins, “Notes on the Atik Mustafa Paşa Camii in Istanbul and Its Frescoes,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39 (1985), 125–34.
Underwood, The Kariye Camii, 1:295.
Cormack, “Word was God,” p. 117.
Byzantinizing images became widespread as supports for both individual and collective prayer, sometimes through their transformation into objects deemed to be miracle- working, especially from the mid-15th century onwards. See Michele Bacci, “Images à la grecque et agentivité miraculeuse à l’époque moderne,” in L’image miraculeuse dans le Christianisme occidental. Moyen Âge – Temps modernes, ed. Nicolas Balzamo, and Estelle Leutrat (Rennes, 2020), pp. 131–48.
Maria Vassilaki, “Cretan Icon-Painting and the Council of Ferrara/Florence (1438/39),”
On these mystery plays, the staging of which has been tentatively attributed to Filippo Brunelleschi, see Irina Danilova, “La rappresentazione dell’Annunciazione nella chiesa della SS. Annunziata in Firenze, vista dall’Arcivescovo di Suzdal,” in Filippo Brunelleschi, la sua opera e il suo tempo, ed. Guglielmo De Angelis d’Ossat, Franco Borsi, and Pina Ragionieri (Florence, 1980), pp. 173–76; Nerida Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno: Plays in Churches in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Florence, 1996), 1:60–63; Megan Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi. The Carmelite Painter (New Haven/London, 1999), pp. 50–53; Kristin Phillips-Court, The Perfect Genre. Drama and Painting in Renaissance Italy (Aldershot, 2011), pp. 36–37. On their impact on the conciliar fathers, see Maria Pia Pagani, “Il ‘perfido’ protagonista: Isidoro di Kiev al concilio di Firenze del 1439,” in L’età di Kiev e la sua eredità nell’incontro con l’Occidente, ed. Gabriele De Rosa, and Francesca Lomastro (Rome, 2003), pp. 157–80, esp. 162–68.
Simeon of Thessaloniki, Dialogus contra haereses, in Patrologiae cursus completus. Series graeca, edited by Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris, 1844–66), 155:112.
See the text in Andrey Popov,
Horst Bredekamp, Theorie des Bildakts (Berlin, 2010).
Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum, History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders (Chicago/London, 1996), pp. 106–08 and passim; Gerhard Jaritz, “Medieval Mechanical Clocks,” in Time: Sense, Space, Structure, ed. Nancy van Deusen, and Leonard Michael Koff (Leiden, 2016), pp. 212–30. For thoughtful remarks on medieval automata in general, see Ittai Weinryb, The Bronze Object in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 152–70.
Anonymous Russian author,
Travel to the Cathedral of Florence, p. 280. Basing on the original text and the Spanish translation on p. 281, I have slightly modified the English version quoted in Annemarie Weyl Carr, “Labelling Images, Venerating Icons in Sylvester Syropoulos’s World,” in Sylvester Syropoulos on Politics and Culture in the Fifteenth-Century Mediterranean. Themes and Problems in the Memoirs, ed. Fotini Kondyli, Vera Andriopoulou, Eirini Panou, and Mary B. Cunningham (Abingdon, 2016), pp. 79–106, esp. 86. I am obliged to my colleague Jens Herlth (Fribourg) for his help with this text.
Susann Waldmann, Die lebensgroße Wachsfigur: Eine Studie zur Funktion und Bedeutung der keroplastischen Porträtfigur vom Spätmittelalter bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1990); Michele Bacci, “Pro remedio animae.” Immagini sacre e pratiche devozionali in Italia centrale (secoli XIII e XIV) (Pisa, 2000), pp. 175–201; Fabio Bisogni, “La scultura in cera nel Medioevo,” Iconographica 1 (2002), 1–15; Georges Didi-Huberman, Ex-voto : image, organe, temps (Paris, 2006); Michele Bacci, “L’individu en tant que prototype dans les ex-voto médiévaux,” Degrés 145–46 (2011), 1–14.
Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori: nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini, and Paola Barocchi (Florence, 1966–97), 3:544.
On wax sculpture as a privileged medium for the development of a naturalistic approach to the human figure, see Aby Warburg, “Bildniskunst und florentinisches Bürgertum,” in Gesammelte Schriften, new edition by Horst Bredekamp, Michael Diers, and Ulrich Pfisterer (Berlin, 1998), 1:89–126, 1:340–52, and Julius von Schlosser, “Geschichte der Porträtbildnerei in Wachs,” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen der Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 29 (1910–11), 171–258, repr. as Tote Blicke. Geschichte der Porträtbildnerei in Wachs, ed. Thomas Medicus (Berlin, 1993). See Megan Holmes, “Ex-Votos: Materiality, Memory, and Cult,” in The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, ed. Michael Cole, and Rebecca Zorach (Aldershot, 2009), pp. 159–81; Roberta Panzanelli, “Compelling Presence: Wax Effigies in Renaissance Florence,” in Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure, ed. Roberta Panzanelli (Los Angeles, 2008), pp. 13–18.
Michele Bacci, Investimenti per l’aldilà. Arte e raccomandazione dell’anima nel Medioevo (Bari/Rome, 2003), pp. 155–201; idem, “Italian Ex-Votos and ‘Pro Anima’ Images in the Late Middle Ages,” in Ex Voto: Votive Giving Across Cultures, ed. Ittai Weinryb (New York, 2016), pp. 76–105.
On such literary descriptions, see Demetrios Pallas, “
Melissenos’s statement is reported in Sylvester Syropoulos’s Memorial, published in Les ‘Mémoires’ du Grand Ecclésiarque de l’Église de Constantinople. Sylvestre Syropoulos sur le concile de Florence (1438–1439), ed. Vitalien Laurent (Paris, 1971), p. 250. On the passage and its ambiguity, see Weyl Carr, “Labelling Images.”
Maria Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “A Fifteenth Century Byzantine Icon-Painter Working on Mosaics in Venice: Unpublished Documents,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 32/5 (1982), 265–72; Maria Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “
Alessandro Diana, “The Funerary Monument of Joseph II, Patriarch of Constantinople,” Benaki Museum 13–14 (2013–14), 103–14, esp. 103; Alessandro Diana, “Intorno al monumento funebre del patriarca di Costantinopoli Giuseppe II in Santa Maria Novella,” Opera nomina historiae 7 (2012), 155–92.
Antonio Muñoz, “Alcuni dipinti bizantini di Firenze,” Rivista d’arte 6 (1909), 113–20; Hans Belting, Das illuminierte Buch in der spätbyzantinischen Gesellschaft (Heidelberg, 1970), pp. 93–94; Diana, “The Funerary Monument,” p. 107; Aldo Galli and Neville Rowley, “Un vergiliato tra le sculture del Quattrocento,” in Santa Maria Novella. La Basilica e il Convento, ed. Andrea De Marchi (Florence, 2016), 2:58–95, esp. 68–73.
Michele Bacci, “Our Lady of Mercy along the Sea Routes of the Late Medieval Mediterranean,” Benaki Museum 13–14 (2013–14), 145–60, esp. 155–56.
See most recently Giuseppe Giura, “La seconda età della pittura in Santa Maria Novella,” in Santa Maria Novella, 2:96–153, esp. 98–108, with previous bibliography. Nothing is known about the identity of the represented donors, but it is likely that the promoter of the work was the widow, on whose initiative the painting was made for the sake of her husband’s soul, as was rather usual in the late Middle Ages. The man’s skeleton (rendered in such a way as to also introduce a hint at the location of Adam’s skull at the foot of the Cross on Golgotha) is shown in its burial setting, included within the altar that was to be used for the performance of pro anima masses.
Diana, “The Funerary Monument,” p. 108.
Rafał Quirini-Popławski, Sztuka kolonii genueńskich w basenie Morza Czarnago (1261– 1475) [Art of Genoese Colonies in the Black Sea Basin (1261–1475)] (Krakow, 2017), p. 151; Rafał Quirini-Popławski, “Greek Painters for the Dominicans or Trecento at the Bosphorus? Once Again about the Style and Iconography of the Wall Paintings in the Former Dominican Church of St. Paul in Pera,” Arts 8 (2019), 131, DOI: 10.3390/arts8040131. Accessed 9 Feb 2022.
Exemplary are the ways in which similar strategies for the afterlife, and the structures associated with them, came to be trans-confessionally used by the different religious denominations in Famagusta during the 14th and 15th centuries: see Michele Bacci, “Patterns of Church Decoration in Famagusta (Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries),” in Famagusta. Art and Architecture, ed. Annemarie Weyl Carr (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 203–76.
Robert G. Ousterhout, The Architecture of the Kariye Camii in Istanbul (Washington, D.C., 1987), pp. 74–76.
Robert G. Ousterhout, “Temporal Structuring in the Chora Parekklesion,” Gesta 34 (1995), 63–76; Engin Akyürek, Bizans’ta sanat ve ritüel [Art and Ritual in Byzantium] (Istanbul, 1996), pp. 167–92; Robert G. Ousterhout, “Funeral Ritual in the Parekklesion of the Chora Church,” in Byzantine Constantinople: Monuments, Topography and Everyday Life, ed. Nevra Necipoğlu (Leiden/Boston, 2001), pp. 89–106.
Underwood, The Kariye Djami, 1:269–95; Brooks, Commemoration, pp. 289–312; eadem, “The History and Significance of Tomb Monuments at the Chora Monastery,” in Restoring Byzantium. The Kariye Camii in Istanbul and the Byzantine Institute Restoration, exh. cat., ed. Holger A. Klein, and Robert G. Ousterhout (New York, 2004), pp. 23–31. See also Robert G. Ousterhout, Finding a Place in History: The Chora Monastery and Its Patrons (Nicosia, 2017).
Emanuel Moutafov,
Nicholas Melvani, “The Last Century of the Chora Monastery: A New Look at the Tomb Monuments,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 114 (2021), 1219–40, esp. 1235.
Underwood, The Kariye Djami, 1:280–88, whose identification of tomb E with that of Metochites’s mother-in-law Irene Raoulaina Palaiologina is quite unlikely. See Brooks, Commemoration, pp. 301–04; Melvani, “The Last Century,” pp. 1229–32. More broadly on Byzantine double portraits, see Ursula Weißbrod, “Hier liegt der Knecht Gottes …”. Gräber in byzantinischen Kirchen und ihr Dekor (11. bis 15. Jahrhundert). Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Höhlenkirchen Kappadokiens (Wiesbaden, 2003), pp. 130–34.
Underwood, The Kariye Djami, 1:288–92; Brooks, Commemoration, pp. 304–06; Melvani, “The Last Century,” pp. 1232–33.
David Jacoby, “The Silk Trade of Late Byzantine Constantinople,” in 550th Anniversary of the Istanbul University. International Byzantine and Ottoman Symposium (XVth Century), 30–31 May 2003, ed. Sümer Atasoy (Istanbul, 2004), pp. 129–44, esp. 139–40; David Jacoby, “Late Byzantium between the Mediterranean and Asia: Trade and Material Culture,” in Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557). Perspectives on Late Byzantine Art and Culture, ed. Sarah T. Brooks (New Haven, 2006), pp. 20–41, esp. 29.
Maria Parani, “Encounters in the Realm of Dress: Attitudes towards Western Styles in the Greek East,” in Renaissance Encounters. Greek East and Latin West, ed. Marina S. Brownlee, and Dimitri H. Gondicas (Leiden/Boston, 2013), pp. 263–302.
Marielle Martiniani-Reber, “Identification des tissus archéologiques de Mystra: origine et datation,” in Parure d’une princesse byzantine. Tissus archéologiques de Sainte-Sophie de Mistra, ed. Marielle Martiniani-Reber (Geneva, 2000), pp. 87–93.
See, among others, Giovanni Curatola, “Tessuti e artigianato turco nel mercato veneziano,” in Venezia e i Turchi: scontri e confronti di due civiltà (Milan, 1985), pp. 186–95; Louise W. Mackie, “Italian Silks for the Ottoman Sultans,” Electronic Journal of Oriental Studies 4/31 (2001), 1–21, https://web.archive.org/web/20041105051714fw_/http://www2.let.uu.nl/Solis/anpt/ejos/EJOS-IV.0.htm. Accessed 7 Feb 2022; eadem, “Ottoman Kaftans with an Italian Identity,” in Ottoman Costumes: From Textile to Identity, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi, and Christoph Neumann (Istanbul, 2004), pp. 219–29; Anna Contadini, “Sharing a Taste? Material Culture and Intellectual Curiosity around the Mediterranean, from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century,” in The Renaissance and the Ottoman World, ed. Anna Contadini, and Claire Norton (Farnham, 2013), pp. 23–61.
Nikolaos Vryzidis and Elena Papastavrou, “Italian and Ottoman Textiles in Greek Sacristies: Parallels and Fusions,” in 15th International Congress of Turkish Art. Proceedings, ed. Michele Bernardini, and Alessandro Taddei (Ankara, 2018), pp. 677–87.
Marielle Martiniani-Reber, “Tessuti veneziani nella pittura bizantina: un esempio della loro diffusione nei territori greci dopo la caduta di Costantinopoli,” in Il contributo veneziano nella formazione del gusto dei Greci (XV–XVII sec.), ed. Chrysa A. Maltezou (Venice, 2001), pp. 165–77; Christos D. Merantzas, “Le tissu de soie comme représentation culturelle: le cas de la peinture monumentale post-byzantine dans la Grèce du Nord,” Bulletin du Centre international d’etude des textiles anciens 83 (2006), 6–21.
This terminology is first encountered in the 1487 Florentine Treatise on Silk Manufacture, see L’arte della seta in Firenze. Trattato del secolo XV pubblicato per la prima volta, e Dialoghi, ed. Girolamo Gargiolli (Florence, 1868), pp. 90–91. See Alessandra Geromel Pauletti, “‘Veludi altobassi doro e darzento de ogni sorte’. Velluti veneziani del XV secolo,” in Fili d’oro e dipinti di seta. Velluti e ricami tra Gotico e Rinascimento, ed. Laura Dal Prà, Marina Carmignani, and Paolo Peri (Trento, 2019), pp. 96–103.
On this definition, see Renata Pompas, Textile Design: ricerca, elaborazione, progetto (Milan, 1994), p. 126.
Some notable comparanda, all dating from c.1450, include: a blue-velvet fragmentary chasuble in the Bargello Museum in Florence, see Paolo Peri, “8. Parte di pianeta di velluto,” in Fili d’oro e dipinti di seta, pp. 195–96; a vermilion chasuble in the parish church of Azzone, near Bergamo, see Viviana Troncatti, “23. Pianeta,” ibid., pp. 227–29; a blue-velvet panel in Palazzo Mocenigo, Venice, see Alessandra Geromel Pauletti, “52. Pannello di velluto,” ibid., pp. 287–88; a vermilion-velvet chasuble in the parish church of Sant’Anna d’Alfaedo near Verona, see Alessandra Geromel Pauletti, “70. Pianeta,” ibid., pp. 334–37. The slanting parallels are no longer encountered in the second half of the 15th century. On the pomegranate pattern, its origins, and symbolism, see Rosalia Bonito Fanelli, “The Pomegranate Pattern in Italian Renaissance Textiles: Origins and Influence,” in Contact, Crossover, Continuity: Proceedings of the Fourth Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America (Los Angeles, 1995), pp. 193–204.
A notable example is an icon of St Nicholas enthroned (c.1400) now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which was frequently reproduced in post-Byzantine painting: see esp. Maria Vassilaki, “
Titos Papamastorakis, “
Vojislav Djurić, “Vizantijske i italo-vizantijske starine u Dalmaciji I.” [Byzantine and Italo-Byzantine Antiquities in Dalmatia], Prilozi povijesti umjetnosti u Dalmaciji Dalmaciji [Contributions to Art History in Dalmatia] 12 (1960), 123–45, esp. 135–44; Vojislav Djurić, Icônes de Yougoslavie (Belgrade, 1961), p. 111; Grgo Gamulin, Bogorodica s djetetom u staroj umjetnosti Hrvatske [The Virgin and Child in the Ancient Art of Croatia] (Zagreb, 1971), p. 149; Grgo Gamulin, “Italokrećani na našoj obali,” [Italo-Cretans on our coasts] Prilozi povijesti umjetnosti u Dalmaciji [Contributions to Art History in Dalmatia] 16 (1966), 265–70; Papamastorakis, “Burial Images,” p. 300.
Cvetan Grozdanov, Ohridskoto zidno slikarstvo od XIV vek [Ohrid Wall Painting from the 14th Century] (Ohrid, 1980), pp. 153–54; Papamastorakis, “Burial Images,” p. 288.
Titos Papamastorakis, “Ioannes ‘Redolent of Perfume’ and His Icon in the Mega Spelaion Monastery,” Zograf 26 (1997), 65–74.
The best overview of such developments is found in Rosa Alcoy, Anticipaciones del Paraíso. El donante y la migración del sentido en el Occidente medieval (Vitoria/Gasteiz, 2017).
See esp. the insightful articles by Laura D. Gelfand, “Surrogate Selves: The ‘Rolin Madonna’ and the Late-Medieval Devotional Portrait,” Simiolus 29 (2002), 119–38, and Laura D. Gelfand, “Piety, Nobility and Posterity: Wealth and the Ruin of Nicolas Rolin’s Reputation,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 1/1 (2009), DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2009.1.1.3. Accessed 8 Feb 2022.