International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Era Bushi Xhaferaj
Institute of Cultural Monuments, Tirana, Albania; 
[e-mail]
Painters and Patrons in Byzantine Period: 
Some Inscriptional Evidence from Albania
This paper examines artists’ position in the economic and social structures of the Byzantine 
period as manifested through the evidence of epigraphic data preserved in monuments of Albania. 
Inscriptions mentioning painters’ name have been frequently encountered as a usual occurrence, 
especially during Late Byzantine period in Southern Albania, an area rich in Christian religious 
monuments with fresco decoration and in epigraphic evidence. Through their examination we 
attempt to seek certain indications on the social affiliation of the painters and their role on artistic 

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creation as well as on the extent and the way in which patron groups influenced the creative impulse 
of the artists. For the purpose of this paper historical and social conditions are also taken into account. 
The majority of extant examples of byzantine inscriptions mentioning painters’ names referred 
in this paper belong to the period extending from the 9
th
century to about 1400 and to various 
monuments’ typologies as hermitages and village churches. They have suggested that the painters 
are usually local monks who offered their services to commissioners coming from the civil and 
military local aristocracy or monks. The programmatic and thematic content of their artistic 
works as well as their style is affected not only by the prevailing imperial doctrine, meaning the 
participation of individual artists in a common collective unconscious, but also by the perceptions 
and aesthetic needs and desires of the contractor, lay, cleric or monk. The ability of the donors to 
create a sympathetic intellectual climate and their economic support may have been also a factor 
which attracted artists to their point of view.