The Painter Angelos and Icon-Painting in Venetian Crete by Maria Vassilaki;

Author:Maria Vassilaki;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Unlimited)
Published: 2023-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

9

The Hand of Angelos?

In 1981, at the Sixth International Congress of Cretan Studies in Hagios Nikolaos, I presented a working hypothesis which seemed particularly daring. To be specific, I maintained that the Cretan painter Angelos, known to us from a whole host of icons (Fig. 9.1) bearing the signature Χείρ ʼΑγγέλου [The Hand of Angelos], was not an artist of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as had been hitherto believed,1 but that he should be identified with Angelos Akotantos, a Cretan painter from the first half of the fifteenth century. The latter was known only from his autograph will, which Manoussos Manoussakas had published in the journal of the Christian Archaeological Society (Δελτίον της Χριστιανικής Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας).2

Fig. 9.1. Athens, Benaki Museum. Painter Angelos, St George slaying the Dragon, icon (inv. no 28129). It is 27 years since I presented that paper and its subsequent publication that same year in volume 18 of the journal Thesaurismata.3 In the intervening period the hypothesis regarding the shared identity of the painter Angelos and Angelos Akotantos has been accepted by most scholars concerned with Late Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art,4 though, of course, some dissenting voices have been raised.5 But whether the theory was accepted or not, it now seems to be universally agreed that the painting of Angelos belongs to the first half of the fifteenth century and possibly more specifically to the second quarter of that century, that is to the years between 1425 and 1450.

1 This dating was based on an icon of the Virgin Hodegetria in the monastery of St George in Old Cairo, which has since been destroyed in a fire. G. Mazarakis, Σημείωσις περί των εν τη κατά το παλαιόν Κάιρον ιερά μονή του αγίου Γεωργίου ευρεθεισών εικόνων (Cairo, 1892), 272. G. Strzygowski, ‘Die Gemäldesammlung der griechischen Patriarchats in Kairo’, BZ 4 (1895), 590–91. 2 Manoussakas, ‘Η διαθήκη’, 139–51. 3 Vassilaki, ‘Ο ζωγράφος Άγγελος’, 290–98. 4 N. Chatzidakis, Icons of the Cretan School, 17. M. Chatzidakis, Έλληνες ζωγράφοι μετά την Άλωση, 147. M. Chatzidakis, Icons of Patmos, in the revised Greek edition of 1995, 116. P. Vokotopoulos, Εικόνες της Κερκύρας (Athens, 1990), 15. M. Acheimastou-Potamianou, Icons of Zakynthos (Athens, 1997), 56–7. C. Baltoyanni, Icons. The D. Ekonomopoulos Collection (Athens, 1986), 12. R. Cormack, Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds (London, 1997), 182–7. 5 M. Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, ‘The Painter Angelos Akotantos: New Biographical Details from Unpublished Documents’, in Λαμπηδών. Αφιέρωμα στη μνήμη της Ντούλας Μουρίκη 2 (Athens, 2003), 499–508. In this paper I intend to take another look at this painter’s oeuvre with the benefit of the detachment which comes with the passage of time. This desire to return to the subject is connected with the fact that I am currently preparing an exhibition for the Benaki Museum which will be dedicated to the painter Angelos and the art of his period. The exhibition will open in 2009 and is entitled: ‘The Hand of Angelos: An Icon Painter in Venetian Crete.’

Nowadays those of us who study Cretan painting are ever more conscious of the role Angelos played in shaping it.

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