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Frescoes at Galata, Cyprus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

Cyprus has in many ages been famed for artistic achievement of many kinds, but the excellence of its mural painting from the twelfth to the sixteenth century is only now being recognised. The Asinou frescoes, probably the most remarkable of all, have recently been described, and elsewhere in the island are many others deserving attention not merely as documents but as monuments of art. Among them are the paintings here reproduced, about seven-eighths of the collection in the Theotokos church near Galata. When visiting it in October 1932 I was unable fully to note all its decoration and other features, but the present incomplete account may perhaps encourage experts to study these well-preserved examples of work in the Byzantine tradition executed by Greek artists during the period of Venetian rule (1489–1570). The church (Fig. 1) stands isolated in a grove of trees beside a mountain brook on the left of the main road leading to Galata about half a mile below that village. No houses or farm buildings are near it, but about eighty yards away is a similar and larger church (Hagia Paraskeue) erected in 1502.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1933

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References

1 In a paper by Archdeacon Harold Buxton read last year before the Society of Antiquaries of London. A fuller description appears in the current volume of Archaeologia.

2 The plan of Jeffery, G. (Hist. Monuments of Cyprus, p. 285Google Scholar) shows in the S. wall a window of which no trace is now visible.

3 The blazon seems to be as follows: dexter, gules, a palm-tree (?) argent; sinister, bendy of seven argent and azure, a lion rampant gules.

4 The verb μακαρίσατε implies that Stephen and his wife were dead.

5 Machairas, L., Chronicle (ed. Dawkins, R. M., 1932), 555Google Scholar, and the note in ii, p. 190.

6 The Kerchief when buried beside this Tile was believed to have imparted to it an impress of the face of Christ.

7 The photographs of the frescoes are by the brothers Mangoian of Nicosia.