International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Theodora Ioannidou
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece; 
[e-mail]
Founding Inscriptions in Churches Painted by the Workshop of the Cretan 
Painter Pagoménos (the 1
st
Half of the 14
th
C.): Corrections and New Readings
In the present communication founding inscriptions are being examined, others signed by the 
painter Pagōménos himself, either alone –seven cases– or in co-operation with other painters – four 
cases–and others not signed by him, attributed however to his workshop with certainty. At the first 
place, in almost all the inscriptions under study emendations have been introduced, limited to issues of 
better reading and decoding either of individual characters or of abbreviations and letter combinations 
(ligaturae). Still, several are the cases in which words or whole phrases and verses, not previously 
pointed out, have been read for the first time. These new data brought in by these re-readings may be 
either referred to the founders’ names or related to the information needed for an accurate dating of 
the monuments, and even unrevealed the identity of a previously unknown co-painter. 
Indicatively let us mention the inscription of the church of St. John the Theologian in 
Trachiniákos of Kándanos (1329), where the two superscribed successive phases that make up the 
text content are clarified and an attempt is made to record and transcribe the illegible first phase. This 
was not in vain since we have acquired some founders’ names. Distinguishing is also the case of the 
church of the Archángeloi in Kúneni (Váthē), where for the first time the signatures of both painters 
have been detected as well as the relation between them:…Io(annis) Pagōménos’ and Nikolaos’ his 
son. While the date in this is not any more legible, in an incised inscription, however, on the marble 
lintel of the gate, the year was readable: 684…, dating the church between 1331 and 1341. We have 
also managed to read –as the late St. Maderakis have done before us– the signatures of Pagōménos 
and Nikolaos in the church of St. John the Theologian in Kálamos, completed according to our 
reading at the 24
th
of May, 1340. Panaghía at Kádros is another monument of the same workshop 
dated also for the first time: on the endings of the arms of the porous cross in the conch window the 
year 6847 (=1338/9) is incised.
The main, however, contribution of this research concerns the founding inscription of the church 
of St. Demetrius in Leivadás (1315-16), in which next to the already, quite recently and correctly, 

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recognized and read Pagoménos’ signature, the name of a hitherto unknown painter of the Western 
Crete has been also detected. This painter, however, Nēphon, signs the work at Leivadás in the first 
position while Pagōménos’ signature is following, something also apparent in the artistic processing 
of the wallpaintings, in which the secondary painter, in this case Pagōménos, seems to be limited in 
an auxiliary role. Actually, the artistic stream represented in Leivadás differs from what we get from 
the rest of Pagōménos’ work. Thus, it is now sufficiently justifiable the observed there discordance 
between the actual style of the paintings and the known style of Pagōménos, used to be considered as 
the main, if not the only, master in the church of Leivadás. Painter Nēphon, then, is the main master 
of the frescoes in Leivadás, and consequently of all the other churches stylistically and graphologically 
related to Leivadás, such as the churches of Christ in Teménia and St. Photius in St. Theodoroi (western 
part), both in Sélinon, and the church of Christ in Kepháli, Kíssamos (1320), as well.