378 Kalopissi-Verti
de Villehardouin, and to her husband Florent de Hainaut, prince of Achaea
(1289–97). Schaefer suggested furthermore that the frescoes were commis-
sioned by Hugh of Brienne, who was appointed bailli of the duchy of Athens
and guardian of the under-aged duke of Athens, Guy ii de la Roche, and thus
briefly governed the duchy (1291–94) and, accordingly, the areas of Argos and
Nauplia. He also proposed that the occasion for the donation was the truce
between the Byzantines and the principality in 1290/91. However, Monika
Hirschbichler in a recent article argued that the coat of arms attributed to
Florent de Hainaut should be rather assigned to Anthony le Flamenc, lord of
Karditsa, and great baron of the Morea (1303–11). Therefore the paintings of
the gate of Nauplia should be dated between 1291, the year in which Hugh
of Brienne assumed power, and 1311, when he died at the battle of Halmyros.25
In addition to the coats of arms, the Latin inscriptions which accompany all
scenes and figures and certain subjects, such as the Lamb of God, which at this
time is encountered only in western medieval art while its representation was
not allowed in the Eastern Church since the Council at Trullo in 691–92, reveal
the Latin identity of the programme. The choice to depict certain saints espe-
cially honoured by pilgrims, such as St Christopher carrying the Christ-child
and St James the Elder, venerated at Santiago di Compostela in Spain, relates
the programme to crusader values. Nonetheless, other subjects, such as Christ
in Glory within a mandorla held by four angels (Figure 11.2), recalling the cen-
tral part of the Ascension of Christ, St Anthony, the exemplar of monasticism,
and St George, now completely destroyed, equally honoured in Byzantium and
in the crusader East, belong to the subjects shared by the two rites and reveal a
rapprochement between the two ethnic groups. On the basis of their style, the
frescoes in the gatehouse of Nauplia have been attributed to a local Byzantine
painter who followed the provincial developments in art in southern Greece in
the 13th century.26
A second layer of paintings in the gatehouse showing a warrior with no nim-
bus and a figure with a black-skinned face, probably a cynocephalus, have been
attributed to the 14th century, before 1389, when the Franks lost control over
the fortress of Nauplia. Schaefer had identified the dog-headed figure with
St Christopher Cynocephalus.27 Contrariwise, Monika Hirschbichler, regard-
ing the two images as a pair, related them to the adventures of Alexander the
Great with the cynocephali in India and to the narrations of the Romance of
Alexander the Great which was a very popular text in both the Byzantine East
25 Hirschbichler, “The Crusader Paintings,” pp. 20–21.
26 Gerstel, “Art and Identity,” p. 268; Hischbichler, “The Crusader Paintings,” pp. 21–22.
27 Schaefer, “Neue Untersuchungen,” pp. 210–11.