International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Georgios
 
Fousteris
University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece; 
[e-mail]
New Data on an “Official” Painter in Mystras
The name of the painter Kyriákos Frankópoulos is indicated in a written inscription in the 
church of St. Nicholas in Agóriani, Northern Laconia. Unfortunately, the date has not been preserved 
in the inscription and therefore the dating of the decoration remains uncertain. 
As scholarly research has already noticed, these wallpaintings are closely connected with two 
other mural sets in the same area, on which we possess secure chronological references: the one of 
Panaghía Vrestenítissa in Vréstena and the other of Taxiárchai in Agriakóna. 
The mural decoration of Agóriani was dated by stylistic criteria around 1300 (N. Drandakis 
1977 - M. Emmanouil 1988). In the case of Vrestenítissa, a dating after 1400 has been suggested (N. 

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Drandakis 1979) based on the conjecture that Nikon, the represented bishop-dedicator, might be 
identified with an homonymous Bishop of Vréstena mentioned at the beginning of the 15
th
c. This 
suggestion has drifted also the dating of the wallpaintings of Agriakóna to the end of the 13
th
c. (E. 
Deliyanni-Dori 1988). 
The wallpaintings of the second phase in the small church of St. Nicholas in Véroia, a 
settlement in the surroundings of Vréstena, have also been ascribed to this workshop (G. Fousteris 
– I. Chouliaras 2015). Neither in this case, however, secure information or inscriptional data exist, 
which might give a reliable dating. 
The suggested dating for the first three monuments (Agóriani ca.1300 - Vrestenítissa / Agriakóna 
ca.1400) results to a divergence of a hundred years long. It has been proposed that this should be 
faced either by re-dating Agóriani towards the mid-14
th
century or under the interpretation that 
a common iconographic and stylistic tradition is being inherited from one workshop to the other 
through the apprenticeship and the anthívola as well (E. Deliyanni-Dori 1999). 
To the solution of this problem rushes to contribute the opposite pointing out that a stylistic 
affinity between the frescoes of Agóriani and the ones of the Metropolis of Mystras exists (M. 
Emmanuil 1988). Further comparative study based on the stylistic and the graphological data of the 
inscriptions leads to the conclusion that all these five mural sets should be ascribed to the turnover 
of one and only workshop. Consequently, the generally accepted dating for the frescoes of the 
Mystras’ Metropolis, i.e. before 1290, based on historical data, puts the basic chronological frame in 
which the remaining monuments should be placed.
According to the above, the painter Kyriákos Frankópoulos is the only eponymous member of 
a Mystras’ “official” artistic workshop activated in the third quarter of the 13
th
century, in which so 
far can be ascribed five mural painting sets.