근세 베네치아 사회의 크레타 화가들

Abstract

The island of Crete became the major center of the Post-Byzantine icon paintings after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Cretan painters favored elongated figures, restraint of gesture, and severely stressed highlights, which were fully developed during the 16th and 17th centuries. Portable icons in this style predominated throughout the Greek Orthodox world during this period, and large amount of them were exported to the Western European society as well. One of the main features of Cretan painters is the ability to commend either the traditional style of the late Paleologan period or the Western style drawn from contemporary Italian art. The merchants from Venice and Venetian territory of Greece acted as intermediaries between Cretan painters and Western markets, and Cretan painters developed an eclectic style influenced by several different traditions and aesthetic preferences. According to the archival sources including the inventories of the Greek Confraternity of Venice, these two different styles were described as 'Greek(alla greca)' and 'Western(alla latina)'. Several Cretan painters of the 16th century like Ioannis Permeniatis, Domenikos Theotokopoulos(El Greco), and Michael Damaskinos creatively assimilated the contemporary currents of Italian painting in their works. However, the artistic personality formed of Cretan painters came into conflict with the traditional concept of the Byzantine icon as a liturgical object, rather than a work of art. The need to distinguish the Greek style from the Western or hybrid style became pressing during the Battle of Crete(1645-1669) and the final fall of Candia(modern Heakleion) to the Turks, as the Greeks tried to preserve their national identity through the Orthodox faith and the veneration of traditional Byzantine icons. Such a tendency is clearly shown in the icon collections of the Greek Confraternity of Venice, which was one of the most important communities of the Greek diaspora since its foundation in 1498. The founding of the church of St. George of the Greeks in the second half of the 16th century was a significant event of the whole Orthodox world, as it was the symbol of the preservation of the Greek identity in the crucial period when the Greek nation had disappeared and the Roman church increased its effort to subjugate the Orthodox church under the papal supremacy. Prominent Painters like Damaskinos and Emmanuel Tzanes worked for the icons on the iconostasis of the church of St. George of the Greeks in Venice, and they met the request of the members of the Greek Confraternity of Venice to apply the conservative Greek manner. Emmanuel Tzanes represents the last generation of the flourishing Cretan art who used various models from the early Renaissance to Mannerism painters as well as the traditional Cretan School Painters of the 15th century like Andreas Ritzos. By the end of the 17th century Greek icon painters gradually lost their tendency to creative renewal of the traditional subject and style. Especially those who sought refuge in Venice or other Venetian-ruled Ionian islands became assimilated Italian models, be degrees parted from the Byzantine tradition. Also the Confraternity in Venice ceased to be the pole of attraction for Western artists and customers, a circumstance closely connected with the more general crisis in painting in the mainland of Greece. The reception of Greek icons and Byzantine art in the Western society was also changed. To the Post-Renaissance Western viewers, classical Greece and Post-Byzantine Greece became separated, not only by their different traditions and ideals, but also by the lacking quality of the latter as a norm for their culture.