372 Kalopissi-Verti
one of the most prestigious and still extant Middle Byzantine monasteries,
was donated by Otto de la Roche to the Cistercian monks of Bellevaux who
rebuilt the 12th-century exonarthex.9 In addition, few examples of sculptures
in a western style found in Thebes and in Athens testify to the religious activi-
ties of the Latins in the Lordship.10 However, there is very little evidence on the
pictorial arts they produced.
In Athens soon after the Latin conquest, at the beginning of the 13th cen-
tury, the Parthenon—the metropolitan church of the Byzantine archbish-
opric of Athens dedicated to the Panagia Atheniotissa—was turned into a
Latin cathedral. Recent restoration works on the Acropolis have shown that
the tower at the south-western end of the Parthenon, previously dated to the
middle Byzantine period, was actually erected in the 13th century at the time
of the de la Roche.11 Consequently, the fragmentary murals painted directly
On the activities of western religious orders in medieval Greece, Nickiphoros I.
Tsougarakis, The Latin Religious Orders in Medieval Greece, 1204–1500 (Turnhout, 2012); on
the convents founded in the Lordship of Thebes, see ibid. pp. 140–41, 177, 269–70.
9 Gabriel Millet, Le Monastère de Daphni: Histoire, architecture, mosaïques (Paris, 1899);
Anastasios Orlandos, “Νεώτερα ευρήματα εις την Μονήν Δαφνίου” [“New Finds in the
Monastery of Daphni”], Αρχείον Βυζαντινών Μνημείων της Ελλάδος (1955–56), 69–73;
Eustathios Stikas, “Στερέωσις και αποκατάστασις του εξωνάρθηκος του καθολικού της μονής
Δαφνίου” [“Consolidation and Restoration of the Exonarthex of the Katholikon of the
Monastery of Daphni”], Δελτίον της Χριστιανικής Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας (1962–63), 25–43;
Beata Kitsiki Panagopoulos, Cistercian and Mendicant Monasteries in Medieval Greece
(Chicago, 1979), pp. 56–62.
10 See, for example, a marble capital with figures of angels in Thebes, Andromachi Katselaki,
in Byzantium 330–1453, ed. Robin Cormack and Maria Vassilaki, exhibition catalogue
(London, 2008), p. 446, no. 259; and two small marble statues of the Virgin in Athens,
Maria Sklavou Mavroidi, Γλυπτά του Bυζαντινού Mουσείου Aθηνών [Sculptures in the Byzantine
Museum of Athens] (Athens, 1999), p. 212, nos. 300–01; Nikos Melvani, “H γλυπτική στις
‘ιταλοκρατούμενες’ και ‘φραγκοκρατούμενες’ περιοχές της ανατολικής Μεσογείου κατά τον 13o
και 14o αιώνα: η διείσδυση της γοτθικής τέχνης και η συνύπαρξή της με τη βυζαντινή” [“Sculpture
in the Italian-Held and Frankish-Held Territories of the Eastern Mediterranean in the
13th and 14th Centuries: The Penetration of Gothic and its Coexistence with Byzantine
Art”], in Γλυπτική και Λιθοξοϊκή στη Λατινική Ανατολή, 13ος–17ος αιώνας [Sculpture and Stone-
Carving in the Latin East] ed. Olga Gratziou (Herakleion, 2007), pp. 37–38. See also below,
p. 403.
11 On the re-dating of the tower in the 13th century, Manolis Korres, “Der Parthenon bis
1687,” in Die Explosion des Parthenon, exhibition catalogue (Berlin, 1990), pp. 23–24; idem,
“O Παρθενώνας”, p. 149; Tanoulas, Τα Προπύλαια, 1:308, n. 43; idem, “ ‘Το πολυτιμότερο στολίδι
του κόσμου’ στο στέμμα της Αραγωνίας: η αθηναϊκή Ακρόπολη υπό καταλανική κυριαρχία
(1311–1388)” [“ ‘The Most Precious Jewel in the World’ in the Crown of Aragon: the
Athenian Acropolis under Catalan Rule (1311–1388)”], in Η Καταλανο-Αραγωνική κυριαρχία