Monumental Art in the Lordship of Athens and Thebes 395
13th century. The painterly rendering and classicising beauty of the faces
in the few surviving fresco fragments in the church of Hagioi Theodoroi
(ss. Theodores) at Aphidnes (Kiourka)62 place the monument among those
which follow the classical trend of the late 13th/beginning of the 14th century.
Three churches in the peninsula of Methana in the eastern Peloponnese,
which was administered by the de la Roche rulers of Athens from 1212 to 1311,
preserve their original mural paintings.63 A linear simplistic approach and
Komnenian reminiscences characterize the provincial murals of the church
of the Panagitsa which have been dated to the decade 1270–80. A similar style
combined with a painterly technique in the rendering of the faces character-
ises the few extant frescoes in the church of St John, also dated in the third
quarter of the 13th century. The frescoes in the church of St Demetrius follow
a simplified provincial style; they are characterised by the awkward execution
of the disproportioned figures and have been dated to the beginning of the
14th century. The anonymous donors or renovators in an inscribed invocation
appealing to the saints for their protection attest to the participation of more
than one patron.
re-dated on the basis of an inscription of the year 1197/98, Ghini-Tsofopoulou, “Νεώτερα
από τη συντήρηση,” pp. 439–41, figs. 6–7.
62 Mouzakis, Βυζαντινές – Μεταβυζαντινές Εκκλησίες Βόρειας Αττικής, pp. 203–209; Eleni Ghini-
Tsofopoulou, “Αφίδνες, Άγιοι Θεόδωροι,” [“Aphidnes, ss. Theodores”], Αρχαιολογικόν Δελτίον
40 (1985), Β, Χρονικά, p. 78. To the same time belong the few detached fragments of paint-
ings from the now ruined church of St Nicholas or St Paraskeve at Kanavari, near Thebes:
Charis Koilakou, “Βυζαντινή και μεταβυζαντινή ζωγραφική στη Θήβα” [“Byzantine and
Post-Byzantine Painting in Thebes”], in Γ ́ Διεθνές Συνέδριο Βοιωτικών Μελετών Θήβα, 4–8
Σεπτεμβρίου 1996 [Third International Conference of Boeotian Studies, Thebes 4–8 September
1996 ], ed. Vasileios Aravantinos, 2 vols. numbered 3A and 3B [=Επετηρίς Εταιρείας Βοιωτικών
Μελετών (2000)], 3A:1021–24, figs. 11–17.
63 Theodoros Koukoulis, “Medieval Methana and Catalogue of Churches,” in A Rough and
Rocky Place: The Landscape and Settlement History of the Methana Peninsula, Greece,
ed. Christopher Mee and Hamish Forbes (Liverpool, 1997), pp. 92–100, 219–33, 239–40,
247–48, 250–55; Theodoros Koukoulis and Marianna Oikonomou, “Δύο βυζαντινοί ναοί
των Mεθάνων: Άγιος Δημήτριος και Άγιος Iωάννης ο Θεολόγος” [“Two Byzantine Churches
of Methana: St Demetrius and St John the Theologian”], Peloponnesiaka 22 (1996–97),
221–76; Angeliki Mitsani, “Provincial Byzantine Wall Paintings on Methana, Greece,” in
Byzantinische Malerei. Bildprogramme–Ikonographie–Stil. Symposion in Marburg vom 25.-
29.6.1997, ed. Guntram Koch (Wiesbaden, 2000), pp. 234–43; Panayotis L. Vocotopoulos,
“Panagitsa: A Byzantine Chapel in Methana,” in Λιθόστρωτον. Studien zur byzantinischen
Kunst und Geschichte. Festschrift für Marcell Restle, ed. Birgitt Borkopp and Thomas
Steppan (Stuttgart, 2000), pp. 313–18.