396 Kalopissi-Verti
Particularly interesting is the painted decoration of the Omorphe Ekklesia
(Hagioi Theodoroi) on Aegina, not only for its precise dating in the year 1289,
but also for certain western influences that have recently been linked to the
art of the crusader East.64 Although Aegina was under the rule of the de la
Roche at that time, the dedicatory inscription, incised on the west wall of the
church, mentions the Byzantine emperor Andronikos ii and the patriarch of
Constantinople Athanasios I. Evidently the anonymous donor consciously
wished to acknowledge not the Latin but the Byzantine authorities, probably
encouraged by the fact that the duchy was then governed by a Greek, Helena
Komnene Doukaina, who ruled from 1287 to 1291 as regent of her minor son
Guillot and had refused to pay homage to the new prince of Achaea, Florent de
Hainaut. According to Foskolou’s apt analysis this attitude has to be linked to
Andronikos ii’s opposition to his fathers’s church policy and to Athanasios I’s
anti-Unionist activity even before he acceded to the patriarchal throne in 1289.65
Despite the orientation of the donor towards Constantinople, certain icono-
graphic motifs reveal the impact of western art. Thus, although iconographi-
cally the paintings go back, to a great extent, to middle Byzantine models, there
are secondary features that reveal the contact with western art. For example,
the special way the masonry of city walls in the architectural background of
the scenes (Figure 11.12) is rendered recalls Romanesque manuscripts and more
specifically codices of the Histoire Universelle and the Histoire d’Outremer pro-
duced in the scriptoria of Acre in the second half of the 13th century.66 These
64 Georgios Sotiriou, “Η Όμορφη Εκκλησιά Aιγίνης” [“The Omorphe Ekklesia of Aegina”],
Επετηρίς Εταιρείας Βυζαντινών Σπουδών 2 (1925), 243–76; Vasiliki Foskolou, “H Όμορφη
Eκκλησιά στην Aίγινα: Eικονογραφική και τεχνοτροπική ανάλυση των τοιχογραφιών” [“The
Omorphe Ekklesia in Aegina: Iconographic and Stylistic Analysis of the Murals”], (unpub-
lished doctoral thesis, University of Athens, 2000); Charalambos Pennas, Η βυζαντινή
Αίγινα [Byzantine Aegina] (Athens, 2004), pp. 20–29, figs. 20–30.
65 Foskolou, H Όμορφη Eκκλησιά στην Aίγινα, pp. 28–41. See also Alice-Mary Talbot, “The
Patriarch Athanasios (1289–1293; 1303–1309) and the Church,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 27
(1973), 11–28; eadem, The Correspondence of Athanasios I (Washington dc, 1975).
66 Vasiliki Foskolou, “Δυτικές επιδράσεις στην τέχνη της λατινοκρατούμενης Ανατολής: Μία
πρόταση ιστορικής ανάγνωσης” [“Western Influences on the Art of the Latin East: A Proposal
for a Historical Reading”], in Ψηφίδες: Μελέτες Ιστορίας, Αρχαιολογίας και Τέχνης στη μνήμη της
Στέλλας Παπαδάκη-Oekland [Tesserae: Studies in History, Archaeology and Art in Memory
of Stella Papadaki-Oekland], ed. Olga Gratziou and Christos Loukos (Herakleion, 2009),
pp. 144–55. On western influences on Byzantine art, see Pallas, “Ευρώπη και Βυζάντιο,”
pp. 30–61; Stella Papadaki-Oekland, “Δυτικότροπες τοιχογραφίες του 14ου αιώνα στην Κρήτη:
Η άλλη όψη μιας αμφίδρομης σχέσης” [“Western-Style Murals of the 14th Century in Crete:
The Other Side of an Interrelationship”], in Ευφρόσυνον: Αφιέρωμα στον Μανόλη Χατζηδάκη
[Euphrosynon: A Dedication to Manolis Chatzidakis], 2 vols. (Athens, 1992), 2:491–516.