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1.Byzantine period

It is difficult to record clearly the state and evolution of art in Corfu during the Byzantine period, from which only a few monuments have been preserved. Wars, frequent and destructive invasions and looting, earthquakes, and later building interventions that have altered those Byzantine monuments preserved, all bear responsibility for this. The city of Corfu itself, with the various “moves” it underwent over the centuries (Palaiopolis-Old Fortress-modern city), and with its fortification or general building modifications, allows us only with difficulty to determine the city’s Byzantine form. However, we have a very important and unadulterated example of Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture in the church of Saints Jason and Sosipater (Aghioi Iason and Sosipatros), which was built about 1000 A.D. in the city’s suburb of Anemomylos, as well as in the small church of Christ Pantocrator on the well-known island of Pontikonisi, dated to the eleventh or twelfth century.

Various other Byzantine monuments, which have also received interventions from time to time, have changed form, with the result today that only some “Byzantine phase” may be discerned. In painting, the equally small number of preserved examples of wall paintings, the chief group of which are those belonging to the small church of Saint Merkourios in the village of Aghios Markos, which date back to 1074, do not permit us an overall picture, while others have been painted over. We have similarly incomplete data on the very few portable icons from the Byzantine age preserved on the island, which are attributed to workshops in Constantinople or mainland Greece, such as the icon of the Virgin Hodegetria in the north narthex of Antivouniotissa, which is the oldest object on exhibit in the Museum. In any case, despite Corfu’s definitive subjugation beginning in 1267 to Roman Catholic rulers, religious art continued to be oriented towards the Byzantine tradition over the next two centuries and down to the Fall of Constantinople, though there is no evidence from preserved works or the sources that Corfu was an especially important artistic center. While our picture of the art of Byzantine Corfu remains unclear, the art of the following period may be sketched with great detail and clarity.

 

2.Following the Fall of Constantinople

When Constantinople, the cohesive center of Orthodox Christendom, was lost in 1453, nearly all the Balkan peninsula passed into Ottoman hands, with the exception of those lands already in the possession of Westerners (Crete, the islands) and of course Corfu. That is, the phenomenon of two sovereign masters presented itself in the Greek world. On the one hand there were the Turks, who conquered the vast majority of Byzantine territory and essentially all of mainland Greece, and on the other the Venetians, who for a time kept Crete but who in the end retained only the Ionian Islands. This, in combination with the loss of Constantinople, the spiritual reference point for Orthodox Christians, led to a different development of society in these regions, and thus to two different paths of artistic development.

More specifically, in those regions subjugated to the Turks, violent conquest and the religious opposition between Islam and Christianity called forth, at least initially, a recession in the socio-economic sphere and stagnation in the cultural sphere, resulting in religious art’s becoming attached to tradition. On the contrary, in the Venetian-ruled regions, initially on Crete and later in the Ionian Islands, which as was natural followed different political and social models, the turning of religious as well as secular art generally towards the art of Western Europe, particularly Italy, was both inevitable and rapid. As a result, submission to Venetian rulers forms the key for both the reading as well as understanding of the particular course and evolution of art and culture generally in the Ionian Islands in relation to the rest of the Greek world. Under the pressure of Ottoman conquest, important groups of Byzantine Orthodox populations, including many artists coming chiefly from Constantinople itself, sought refuge in the more secure and hospitable environment of those regions already controlled by the Venetians such as Crete, the Ionian Islands, and Venice itself. In these regions, the Western Christian conquerors had created more favorable-essentially, favored-conditions of occupation, including recognition of relevant privileges to their subjects, economicand professional equality, and above all a regime secure from the Turkish threat. These basic elements allowed the Venetians’ Greek subjects to preserve their ethnic, religious, and finally artistic traditions. At the same time, the very frequent commercial (and other) contacts with their ruling center of Venice brought the Greeks of these regions into direct contact with the intellectual and artistic movements of the Western European, above all the Italian, Renaissance. Under such conditions, it is easy to understand the flowering of commerce and the economy, with the consequent flowering of the arts.

As early as the fifteenth century, Crete was the first way-station for Orthodox refugees from Constantinople. Thus, it succeeded Constantinople, the Queen of Cities (Vasilévousa Pólis) after its fall as the most important intellectual and artistic center for Hellenism, and as an especially cosmopolitan environment during this period, until its final conquest by the Turks in 1669, an event which put a violent end to its cultural development. Within this mixed Christian social environment of Orthodox Greeks and Catholic Venetians that artists found on Crete when  they and their successors arrived from Constantinople, there was a need tofind a balance between their tradition and the new artistic circumstances they encountered. They continued in accordance with the models and style of late Palaiologan Byzantine painting (1261-1453), but in evitably they quickly began selectively adopting and combining new elements from the contemporary Italian Renaissance in their art, elements with which they de facto were coming into direct contact. Thus, there was gradually created in the fifteenth century a distinctive style in religious painting, that of the Cretan School. Post-Byzantine Orthodox art was characteristically stamped by this school, in its synthesis of the Byzantine tradition and the Italian Renaissance and later, the Baroque. It was the art of the portable icon, the most characteristic liturgical object of the Orthodox Church, which flourished particularly under this school.

The many famous Cretan icons, which preserved the reputation of Byzantine icons, were painted in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by artists of great skill as well as the ability to adapt to the preferences of each customer, whether Catholic or Orthodox. Thus, Cretan artists painted equally successfully, depending on their client, either in agreement with the Italian style (“alla latina”), or in accordance with the Byzantine tradition (“alla greca”), or even in a mixed style, by introducing some Western elements into their traditional painting. Orthodox monastic centers of Hellenism from Sinai to Patmos, churches of the Greek diaspora from Odessa to Marseilles, Greeks or Venetian nobles and the wealthy bourgeois from Italy, Russia, and the Balkans, formed their customers and recipients, and thus Cretan icons, now much sought after, traveled everywhere, first and foremost to the Ionian Islands and Corfu, which were also under Venetian rule. The same thing gradually happened with the painters themselves, who also removed to the Ionian Islands, Venice, or elsewhere. As a result, close commercial ties and trade routes between Crete and Venice via the Ionian Islands in time determined the nature and evolution of both the Cretan School as well as of painting in the Heptanesian world. Major names among Cretan creators of this age are represented by their works in Antivouniotissa, including Nikolaos Tzafouris and Michail Damaskinos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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3.From the 16th century to the Heptanesian School and the 19th century

Corfu and the Ionian Islands, which had already developed a correspondingly stable course within the prosperous political, economic, and social framework of Venetian rule, experienced an historical framework similar to that of Crete. On Corfu in particular, the coexistence of Greeks and Westerners from as early as 1267, and especially the direct coexistence with the Most Serene Republic of St. Mark (Venice) from 1386, appropriately paved the way and determined the course of society and its art in the following centuries.

Architecture

During the sixteenth century, the Turkish invasions of 1537 and 1571 brought enormous destruction both to the Corfiot countryside as well as the as-yet unwalled city that lay outside the Old Fortress. This resulted in the loss of portable icons and heirlooms, and the destruction of monuments, both secular and religious. As a result, it is impossible to obtain a full picture of architectural reality in Corfu prior to the destructive Turkish invasions,particularly for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and earlier. As concerns the architecture of this period, many later remodelings of all the churches preserved from the attacks, as well as the new town plan for the city following fortification works, make obtaining this picture even more difficult. Antivouniotissa, however, is among those monuments that apparently escaped the Turkish scourge, precisely because the Turkish invaders did not reach this part of the city of Corfu. At the same time, the church does not seem to have been subjected to architectural interventions on a scale sufficient to alter significantly its original form.

Nonetheless, primarily after the city was walled (from the late 16th century), the large number of churches that were built and largely preserved down to our own day, in combination with secular buildings both private and public as well as the mansions of the wealthy,allow us to gain a clear and most charming image of the city of Corfu during that era. Its particular development, especially from the late sixteenth century onward, was directly dependent upon the contemporary Italian Baroque models of Venice, and was comparable to Cretan and Italian cities along the Adriatic coast,which also belonged to the Republic of Saint Mark. Like these cities, Corfiot architecture as a whole presents dense construction inside the walls, was adorned with many churches and wealthy mansions in the Baroque style, and faithfully followed the contemporary esthetic preferences of Venice. Elegantbuildings, tall bell towers, frames, ochres and earth tones on the facades of painted buildings, circular and arched openings in combination with rectangular ones, as well as gabled, tile-covered roofs offer a running commentary on their Italian prototypes. A similar architectural environment for cities or buildings is easily recognizable in many instances in the icons of this age. The case of Corfu represents the only participation by Greece in the pan-European movement of the Renaissance and Baroque, though these were absorbed and successfully filtered to suit the givens of local tradition and craftsmen, materials and climate, in an uninterrupted continuity. The same occurred in the case of Neoclasscism during the nineteenth century. Corfu had the great good fortune to escape the earthquake of 1953, which unfortunately destroyed the other Ionian Islands. In consequence, today simple observation of the city makes it immediately apparent that it comprises an urban design displaying architectural continuity over the course of sixcenturies, something unique in the Greek world.

 

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Painting

Painting also developed within a comparable framework during the same era in the Ionian Islands. At the same time, as was discussed above, many paintings as well as already-successful Cretan painters were circulating in the Ionian world, with Venice as final destination. From the late sixteenth century onward, and above all in the seventeenth, the residence of Cretan refugees is well attested in Corfu and the other Ionian islands. Professional, economic, or political reasons, natural disasters or plagues, and above all the ever-increasing Turkish threat called forth these population displacements. Thus, quite a number of Cretan painters are found living or staying for some time in Corfu before their final stop, which was normally Venice. In this way, works by Cretan painters already known in the Ionian Islands were now painted in workshops created by refugee painters in their new homeland. Particularly after 1669, with the final fall of Crete to the Turks, their presence in the islands was further strengthened by the arrival of the last Cretan artists, who once more took refuge in Venice or the Ionian Islands, primarily in the two largest urban centers of Zakynthos (Zante) and Corfu. From early on, numerous locals apprenticed with the great Cretan painters as well as their successors. The unusual combinatory style of painting created by the Cretan painters was not only immediately accepted in the Ionian Islands, where it was transplanted, but also spread quickly.

Corfiot as well as Zakynthian painters, basing their work on the spirit of their Cretan masters, working either in the Byzantine tradition or in accordance with the Italian style, or even combining the two, gradually created their own style. Given the fall of Crete and the now direct artistic influence of Venice, absorbing ever more Western elements into their painting was de facto inescapable. Thus, combining all the above with the prevailing economic and social conditions, the presuppositions for the flowering of an autonomous artistic tradition with the pronounced acceptance of Italian models were created in Zakynthos and Corfu from the late seventeenth and above all in the eighteenth century. Antivouniotissa hosts representative works of the great painters of this period, including Tzanfournaris, Avramis, Tzanes, and Kontarinis. By the early eighteenth century, onditions in the Ionian Islands were ripe for the full application of Italian art, particularly that of the late Renaissance and Baroque, to religious painting. Thus, secular elements (“secularization of religious art”) were now definitively introduced into Ionian religious painting. The figures and subjects depicted were rendered three-dimensionally, and with the employment of perspective, and intense emotionalism and theatricality characterize figures’ movements.

At the same time, the traditional Byzantine technique of egg tempera on wood was abandoned, and oil on canvas (a piece of cloth specially treated so that painting could be applied to it) became prevalent. Large or small works on canvas gradually replaced portable icons on wood in churches, especially those in the cities. The inception and starting-point of the Heptanesian School in painting was Panagiotis Doxaras, who was completely identified in terms of his art with the great Italian painter of the late Renaissance Paolo Veronese (1528-1588). In 1727, Doxaras, a painter as well as a soldier in service to Venice, painted the ceiling of Saint Spyridon in Corfu in a purely Italian style, copying a subject similar to that of the Apotheosis of Venice in the Doge’s Palace at Venice. At the same time, he laid the theoretical bases for the Heptanesian School with his translations of relevant works. With Doxaras and his Zakynthian successors, including Koutouzis, Kantounis, and others, the religious painting of the Ionian urban centers turned fully to the Baroque, though change came more slowly to the countryside.

Works of the Heptanesian School in Antivouniotissa, such as the large oil painting high on the west wall above the Altar, are immediately recognizable. It is also easy to discern Italian influence in all forms of artistic expression, as is discussed in greater detail below for wood carving, silver-working, and the decorative arts, as well as in regard to the church’s overall style. Finally, during the nineteenth century, which was marked by major political realignments, by a succession of rulers, by the rule of the English and the Union with Greece in 1864, a sophisticated culture was cultivated in all fields of arts and letters in the Ionian Islands. The Ionian Academy, schools of higher learning such as the School of Fine Arts, and important figures like the national poet Dionysius Solomos, Nikolaos Chalikiopoulos-Mantzaros, who set the Greek National Anthem to music, Andreas Kalvos, and other Hep tanesians put their characteristic seal on the cultural reality of the newly-founded Modern Greek state. In art, the Neoclassicism that generally prevailed in Europe naturally influenced the Ionian Islands as well. Corfu with its capable artists succeeded Zakynthos, which had played the leading role in painting during the previous century.

At the same time, the city itself retains pronounced architectural elements as well as buildingsfrom this period, in a harmonious and unique combination with the architecture from the period of Venetian rule. Among the various signed and unsigned exhibits from this period displayed in Antivouniotissa are works such as those by the nineteenth century Corfiot painter Ioannis Kalosgouros. In conclusion, it is noteworthy that the arts and letters, theater, music, and Heptanesian culture generally resulted from the political, economic, and social conditions in which the Ionian Islands found themselves from the fourteenth century onward, and that it formed a characteristic, unified, and distinctive subset of Modern Greek culture. The Church-Museum of Antivouniotissa in particular is the only example of a monument that presents as a whole the religious art of the Ionian Islands over the past sixcenturies in all its manifestations. It essentially reflected the aesthetic tastes of Corfiot urban society as these evolved over a long period (particularly under Venetian rule) during the continuous coexistence of Orthodox Greeks and Catholic Venetians within a Western European setting. Within this coexistence, though art as a wholewas oriented towards Western European means of expression, the Heptanesians nevertheless` preserved intact their Greek consciousness and Eastern Orthodox faith.

 

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