International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

POST-BYZANTINE ART ‒ PART 1
Chairs: 
Angeliki Strati, Bojan Miljković
Ioannis Vitaliotis
, 
Some Issues of Terminology Concerning the Study of Post-Byzantine Painting
Mirosław Piotr Kruk
,
 
The Corpus of Icons from the 14
th
– 16
th 
Century in the Collection of the National Museum in 
Krakow
Nasa
Patapiou
, 
Άγνωστα ιστορικά στοιχεία για κυπριακή εικόνα του 16ου αι.
Chryssavgi Koutsikou
, 
Peindre sous l’influence de l’art crétois : 
une icône historiée de saint Nicolas portant la signature du peintre Christodoulos Marietis
Angeliki
Strati
, 
Εικόνες του ζωγράφου Φράγκου Κατελάνου στην Καστοριά
Georgios Chr. Tsigaras
, 
Εικόνες του 15
ου
και 16
ου
αιώνα από την Ξάνθη
Magdalini Parcharidou
, 
Εικόνες του 17
ου
αιώνα από την Άσσηρο Θεσσαλονίκης
Aneta Serafimova
, 
The Kosmas Cosmos and Representations of Psalm 148, 149 and 150: 
A Case Study of the ‘Praise the Lord’ Icon from the Museum of Macedonia (Skopje)

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Ioannis Vitaliotis
Academy of Athens, Research Centre for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art, Athens, Greece; 
[e-mail]
Some Issues of Terminology Concerning the Study of Post-Byzantine Painting
The natural delay of the development of the study of the Post-Byzantine church painting in 
comparison to that of its “natural” predecessor, i.e. of the painting of the Byzantine era, manifests 
itself by a certain confusion or inaccuracy concerning some aspects of terminology currently or, at 
least, frequently in use. This issue should be addressed now that the study of the art of the Orthodox 
populations of the Balkans following the Fall of Constantinople (1453) has attained a degree of 
maturity. As a result, there is a need for a widely accepted, scientifically correct art-historical 
vocabulary, adapted to the specificities of the field of Post-Byzantine Art.
One of the terms needing to be revisited is the synonymic expressions “anti-classical painting” 
and “anti-classical trend”. These are frequently - and often with little consideration - used in order 
to describe the artisan and sometimes even openly naïve byzantine-style painting dating from late 
15
th
to the early 18
th
century. Indeed, the “hardening” and simplified rendering of the forms is a 
quite common feature of the church painting in the Ottoman Balkans and it is especially apparent 
between ca. 1570 and 1730. However, the above-mentioned trend seems to reflect more a lack of 
artistic efficiency, or, at least, an inadequate training, rather than a conscious will of the painter to 
distinguish himself from the classicizing forms inherited by the past, as might the expression “anti-
classical” imply. 
Some objections could also be put forth regarding the simplified expression “Western 
influences” in cases of motifs and subjects copied from western stamps and constantly incorporated 
into the Post-Byzantine painting as early as the 16
th
c.
The lack of an accurate and generally accepted terminology might be pinpointed in other 
thematic frames too. The terms “School of North-Western Greece” or “Local School of Epirus” have 
been being used for decades in order to designate the artistic trend of the 16
th
c. represented, among 
others, by the painters Frangos Katelanos and the Kondaris brothers, all of them originating from 
Thebes, Boeotia. The above-mentioned expressions were adopted on the grounds that in Jannina 
and in the neighboring regions a considerable amount of these painters’ work has been preserved. 
However, the last research results on the George and Frangos Kondaris’ workshop have brought to 
light quite a few tokens of their activity in Attica and Boeotia. Therefore, a more “general” term, 
such as “Continental School” (in distinction to the “Cretan School”), might be appropriate to define 
the “erudite” church painting produced by artists emerging from the Orthodox communities in the 
Ottoman Balkans during the aforementioned period.

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