376 Kalopissi-Verti
the naos has been identified as le Flamenc’s tomb21 and was decorated with
frescoes of an eschatological character. The intrados of the arcosolium bears
the figures of two angels, one of which holds the scroll of heaven22 as in the
monumental depiction of the Second Coming in Metochites’s funerary cha-
pel in Mone Choras in Constantinople (1315–21). The personifications of the
sun and the moon as cosmological symbols decorate the scroll (Figure 11.1).
Two more angels, one of them sounding the trumpet, have been revealed in
the recent restoration works carried out by the 23rd Ephorate of Byzantine
Antiquities on the wall directly above the arch of the tomb.23 Stylistically
the frescoes of Akraiphnion, though provincial, follow the early 14th-century
trends in monumental painting in Byzantium. In fact, the church of St. George
represents an epigraphically documented case of a Latin patron who made a
donation to an Orthodox monastic church located in his fief and whose tomb
was decorated with murals in accordance with Byzantine models. It offers thus
a characteristic example of acculturation of a member of the upper class of the
Latin community to the Byzantine cultural and religious ambience.
The surviving mural paintings in the antechamber of the gatehouse lead-
ing to the Latin part of the citadel of Nauplia in the Peloponnese, an area
which belonged in the 13th century to the de la Roche overlords, offer another
interesting example of monumental art that can be assigned with certainty
to Latin patronage.24 The key for identifying the patrons lies in the coats of
arms depicted above the entrance to the chamber. Three of them have been
identified by Wulf Schaefer, who uncovered the frescoes in 1956–58, as belong-
ing to Hugh of Brienne, count of Lecce, to Isabelle, daughter of William ii
21 For a different view, Lock, The Franks, p. 219.
22 Apocalypse 6:13–14; Isaiah 34:4. Herbert Hunger, “ Ἐλιγήσεται ὁ οὐρανὸς ὡς βιβλίον” [“And
the Heavens Shall be Folded together as a Book”], Κληρονομία 1 (1969), 79–82.
23 I wish to thank the director of the Ephorate, Dr. Pari Kalamara, and the archaeologist
Yannis Vaxevanis for allowing me to see the newly revealed frescoes.
24 Wulf Schaefer, “Neue Untersuchungen über die Baugeschichte Nauplias im Mittelalter,”
Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts 76 (1961), 156–214; Demetrios I.
Pallas, “Eυρώπη και Bυζάντιο” [“Europe and Byzantium”], in Bυζάντιο και Eυρώπη. A ́
Διεθνής Bυζαντινολογική Συνάντηση, Δελφοί, 20–24 Iουλίου 1985 [Byzantium and Europe: First
International Byzantine Meeting, Delphi, 20–24 July 1985] (Athens, 1987), pp. 32–34; Sharon
E.J. Gerstel, “Art and Identity in the Medieval Morea,” in The Crusades from the Perspective
of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh
(Washington dc, 2000), pp. 265–68; Monika Hirschbichler, “The Crusader Paintings in
the Frankish Gate at Nauplia, Greece: A Historical Construct in the Latin Principality
of Morea,” Gesta 44 (2005), 13–30; Kalopissi-Verti, “Επιπτώσεις της Δ ́ Σταυροφορίας,”
pp. 64–65.