International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Anthi A. Andronikou
University of St Andrews
Between Apulia and Cyprus:
 
The 
Madonna della Madia 
in Monopoli
The present paper will probe a thirteenth-century panel preserved in Apulia that is considered 
import from Cyprus. The work is the 
Madonna della Madia 
held in the cathedral of the coastal town 
of Monopoli and displays the Virgin and Child with two supplicants. The Monopolitan panel along 
with a group of icons of the Virgin 
Hodegetria 
preserved in Tuscany, Lazio and southern Italy are 
considered Cypriot ‘commodities.’ Their style situates them in a criss-cross of relations between 
southern Italy, Cyprus and the artistic production that the Crusaders developed in the Crusader 
States of the East, conventionally known as Crusader art. Still, these panels present something of a 
thirteenth-century conundrum apropos their provenance and the assumed exchanges that Cyprus 
had with those Italian territories.
As already noted, the paper will concentrate on the panel from Monopoli, which, although 
very well known in academic publications, has not received due scholarly attention and is usually 
studied as an isolated object. The current study will examine the 
Madonna della Madia 
systematically 
for the first time, taking into account not only stylistic quests, but also issues of iconology and 
iconography. It will firmly place the panel within its religious and social context, and link it to the 
cultural practices of its era. Most importantly, the paper will revisit the prevalent view that the 
panel is Cypriot, by affording a close examination of its iconography, supplicants’ portraits, style 
and technique, and by introducing into the conversation comparative material from Cyprus.
By sieving through the Apulian 
Madonna
, broader issues vis-à-vis the role of Cyprus as 
distributor of art in southern Italy will also be problematized. The ‘Cyprus question’ in southern 
Italian art of the thirteenth century is a vexed issue, one that has been previously studied through a 
somewhat limited method that confined itself to outworn stylistic conventions. The 
Madonna della 
Madia 
will be viewed here as cult image that interacted with a net of social, cultural and religious 
contexts, which dictated its production and function.