Art in a Cross-Confessional Context: A Trecento Icon at the Panagia Phanerōmenē in Kastoria

• In Event: Trecento Art Beyond Italy I

Abstract

Often the images from the Early Modern era overlay earlier images hidden beneath. Such is the case with a remarkable icon of the Man of Sorrows at the Church of the Panagia Phanerōmenē in Kastoria in northwestern Greece. This icon presents a striking instance of a Western type refashioned to suit an Orthodox liturgical setting. Crafted at the acme of mendicant Italian missionary efforts in Byzantium, it affords insight into the reconceptualization of devotional images by artisans active in the fourteenth-century eastern Mediterranean sphere. This appropriative process was reciprocal, as analysis of other syncretistic images shows. Proceeding from questions of origin and identity traditionally asked of ‘hybrid’ works of art, this paper focuses on function: use-value and the devotional context in which the Phanerōmenē icon served. Embedded within this discussion are comments on the state of Crusader Art and a plea to extend its parameters to encompass Trecento Italian painting.

Author

• John Lansdowne, Princeton University