Monumental Art in the Lordship of Athens and Thebes 383
of its erection in 1232/33 and the name of the founder, the monk and bishop
Ignatios, proedros of Thermeia (Kythnos) and Kea, which was one of the suf-
fragan bishoprics of the metropolis of Athens.37 In addition to this important
documentary information, the sophisticated language of the metrical inscrip-
tion testifies to a scholarly milieu in early 13th-century Attica.
Preserved almost intact, the iconographic programme is in accordance with
the established models of Orthodox church programmes. The equal role attrib-
uted to the leading apostles, Peter, the founder of the Church of Rome, and
Paul, the most celebrated apostle in the East, for example in the scene of the
Last Judgment is an indication of the new political situation in Frankish Attica.
The foundation inscription praises Peter as the “foundation of Orthodox doc-
trines” (κρηπὶς ὀρθοδόξων δογμάτων) and Paul as the “preacher of godly teach-
ings” (κῆρυξ ἐνθέων διδαγμάτων). If this emphasis on the two top-ranking
apostles can be interpreted as a desire for compromise and rapprochement
between Greeks and Latins on behalf of the founder, the portrait of Michael
Choniates (d. c. 1222) in the sanctuary (Figure 11.5), nearly ten years after his
death, shows the patron’s desire to extol the last Orthodox metropolitan of
Athens (1182–1204) before the Frankish conquest.
In addition, the representations of St Mamas and St Tryphon in the nave
(Figure 11.6), who are considered as protectors of flocks and crops respectively,
each holding a lamb in his arm, relate the iconography of the church to the
rural communities of Mesogaia, an area which preserved its agrarian character
from antiquity to almost the present day. Moreover, the images of St Floros and
St Lauros, holding a chisel and cutters respectively, allude to their professions
as stonemasons and to the handicrafts exercised by the local population.38
The stylistic features of the murals in St Peter at Kalyvia Kouvara, i.e. the
adherence to the Komnenian artistic tradition traceable in certain figures
and the flat, linear conception reflected in another group of paintings in the
same church, link the painted decoration of St Peter to the murals that once
adorned the two chapels of the cave church on Mount Penteli (now dispatched
and exhibited in the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens), dated
37 On the dedicatory inscription, Coumbaraki-Panselinou, Saint Pierre, pp. 47–50; eadem,
“Άγιος Πέτρος,” pp. 173–78; Kalopissi-Verti, Dedicatory Inscriptions, pp. 60–62. Andreas
Rhoby, Byzantinische Epigramme auf Fresken und Mosaiken (Vienna, 2009), pp. 139–43. A
now destroyed monogram on the impost of the mullion in the apse window mentioned
Ignatios as bishop.
38 Sharon E.J. Gerstel, “The Byzantine Village Church: Observations on its Location and on
Agricultural Aspects of its Program,” in Les Villages, p. 170, fig. 3.