free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

Art under the Venetians
Rome, and the rest, are the representatives of a great multitude,
examples of virtue to all those still on earth.
I have concentrated on this one church as an example. It is probably
the best of them, and must be seen. But others may prefer other chapels:
for instance, the superb little church of the Asomatos (“church of the
fire-formed generalissimo of the upper powers, the Archangel Michael’)
at Archancs, with its vigorous Old Testament scenes including the
capture of Jericho, in which the tiny Joshua is dwarfed by the Archangel
with his naked sword. This church is notable, too, for a Crucifixion
in which the Christ bends at the waist as if being torn apart by
the weight of His own body, while the Virgin bends fainting, her hands
falling limp; a painting moving and realistic in a new style which
marks the last flowering of Byzantine fresco work in both Macedonia
and Crete.
Others again may prefer the church of St Fanourios (Valsamonero),
where the elongated figures in the fresco of John the Baptist in the
desert put one in mind of El Greco. And others may simply wish to
wander in search of little-known churches. For these last, good areas to
explore are Amari, west of Mt Ida, and Selino, Kydonia, and Apokoronas
in western Crete. But the whole western end of the island is
studded with painted churches. I remember one morning visiting two
near Sphakia. I noticed in the first (St George at Komitades) the face
of a saint, only a boy, with long hair and large limpid eyes, a face
astonishing in its grave beauty; and in the second (the half-ruined,
roofless Prophet Elias at Skaloti) a Roman face, tough, realistic,
authoritarian, blazing in the light of the midday sun. Sheer luck had
shown me within an hour of each other these two representatives
of the Byzantine genius, the withdrawn lover of God, and the worldly
lover of good order and lawful government. But in an island of eight
hundred churches one may expect luck.
In Crete herself the art of painting frescoes seems to be moribund by
the sixteenth century; yet outside Crete it is Cretan artists who are
decorating the great churches of the Meteora and the Holy Mountain.
One of the reasons for this must be the fall of Constantinople in 1453;
for that turned Crete into the cultural centre of the Greek world, either
as a permanent home for refugees or as a resting place on. the way to
Venice and the west. So it is natural that Cretan artists are prominent
in this last flowering of Greek wall painting. But why were they painting
not in Crete but in the mainland monasteries ?
I incline towards the simplest answer, which is economic. On the
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