Monumental Art in the Lordship of Athens and Thebes 413
Painters’ names are seldom recorded. Exceptionally, a distinctive reference
to the painter Ioannes “from the great city of Athens” is made in the dedica-
tory inscription of the church of the Holy Trinity at Kranidi (1244). Moreover,
Georgios Aras is mentioned in the inscription of St Nicholas Mavrika on
Aegina (1330).114 In addition to these rare references to painters’ names, the
extant church murals in the Duchy of Athens and Thebes in the 13th and 14th
centuries are eloquent testimonies of painters’ working patterns. Thus, we
may assume that they worked either alone or were organised in workshops
and that they covered small distances within the duchy or in neighbouring
regions. Ioannes from Athens, for example, painted churches in the Argolid
and in Euboea. The “workshop of St Peter at Kalyvia Kouvara” had a very large
range of activity mainly in churches in Attica and its borders, both in town
and in the countryside.115 At the same time, the artistic evidence shows that
there were itinerant painters coming to Attica or Boeotia from other regions,
trained in important artistic centres, mainly Thessalonica according to stylistic
evidence, who worked simultaneously with their local colleagues. Such paint-
ers have been located in Omorphe Ekklesia at Galatsi and in the church of St
Nicholas at Kalamos (second phase) and probably also in the cave church of
Zoodochos Pege in Kopais (1333).116
The mention of rulers and high ranking ecclesiastics in church inscriptions
reveals the patrons’ political convictions and religious beliefs in conjunction
with local historical and social circumstances. An inscription in the Omorphe
Ekklesia on Aegina (1289) mentions Andronikos ii—a few years after his
ascent to the throne and the refutation of his father’s pro-Union policy—,
and Patriarch Athanasios I, revealing thus the unknown patron’s loyalty to
the Byzantine emperor and his adherence to Orthodoxy. Andronikos iii is
recorded in the founders’ inscription in Desphina (1332).117
One of the dedicatory inscriptions in the church of St Nicholas Mavrika in
Aegina (1330) records the Catalan ruler, Don Alfonso, the son of King Frederick
(ἀφεντέβοντος δὲ ντὸν αλφοσ / ηὸσ ρὲ φεδερήγου). Don Alfonso Fadrique
d’Aragon ruled over Aegina from 1317 to 1338.118 The mention of foreign rulers
Spieser and Elisabeth Yota, Réalités Byzantines 14 (Paris, 2012), pp. 125–40. See also
Angeliki E. Laiou, “The Peasant as Donor (13th–14th Centuries),” ibid. pp. 107–24.
114 See above, pp. 380, 408.
115 See above, pp. 381–89.
116 See above, pp. 400–01, 407.
117 See above, pp. 396, 407–08.
118 See above, p. 408.