International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Anestis Vasilakeris
Boğaziçi University, Department of History, Istanbul, Turkey; 
[e-mail]
The Notions of Evolution and Change in the Career of Palaeologan Painters
Unlike what can be observed in the Italian Duecento and Trecento, artists who are known from 
a series of works are extremely rare in Palaeologan Byzantium. The collaborating painters Michael 
Astrapas and Eutychios are the most illustrius example from the late 13
th
and early 14
th
centuries, as 
well as the provincial painter Ioannis Pagomenos, active in western Crete. The work atributed to the 
first two shows a puzzling diversity, whereas Pagomenos’ work looks rather homogenous. However, 
how safe can it be to try to observe evolution or change in the work of these artists? Furthermore 
what would the notions of artistic evolution and change signify in Palaeologan cultural context?
The interpretation of formal diversity in the various works of Palaeologan wall-painters poses 
a series of methodological and historiographical issues. These mostly stem from the serious lack of 
historical information which is necessary in order to observe the Byzantine Artist as an individual 
involved in a creating process. This deficiency cannot be remediated by orientalist stereotypes, post-
Byzantine or Italian models, but needs to be taken into account as such. In the perspective of an 
appropriate methodology of formal analysis, studies in manuscript illuminations have already been 
more successful in bringing this problematic several steps further. Yet the extensive corpus of the 
preserved fresco ensembles still allows some solid remarks on the individual character of certain 
formal features. 
This brief analysis of artistic individuality in Late Byzantium will also show that diversity and 
change from a work to another might not be exclusively a product of time, and therefore not tightly 
associated with the notion of evolution.