400 Kalopissi-Verti
of western monks holding gospel books in the narthex show an attempt for
consensus with the Latin Church. Nonetheless, the images of Saints Peter and
Paul facing each other on the north and the south wall respectively in the naos
emphasise the equal role recognised to the two leading apostles. Furthermore,
emphasis is laid on the Incarnation, Sacrifice and the Eucharist which made
possible the Church’s missionary activities. The scene of the Mission of the
Apostles (Figure 11.14) in the south chapel, in which both leading apostles Peter
and Paul are equally accentuated, and the images of apostles holding the gos-
pel book in the same chapel show an emphasis on the spreading of the Gospel
and the role of apostolic preaching. In a way, the chapel’s programme seems to
be a pendant to that of the narthex in which figures of Latin monks holding the
gospel book (Figure 11.15) are included. Was it an intention of the donor(s) to
give an Orthodox answer to the missionary activities of the mendicant orders
in the East? The depiction of a nowadays almost destroyed monumental figure
of St George on horseback, in the south chapel, a highly venerated saint both
in Byzantium and in the Latin East, on the one hand, and the scenes of his
martyrdom in the narthex, on the other, seem to link the two spaces as well.
The figure of St Procopius mounted next to George points to Palestine where
he was especially venerated.70 The representation of so many western saints in
the narthex among monks of the Orthodox East is unique in mainland Greece
and raises questions about the status and the intentions of the donor. The
erudite, meaningful, and targeted iconographic programme and the stylistic
quality of the frescoes point to an eminent donor(s) from ecclesiastical and
monastic circles, exceptionally learned, preoccupied and concerned with the
differences and disagreements between the two rites and promoting a rap-
prochement between the two Churches.
The murals of the Omorphe Ekklesia are the work of more than one painters
who seem to have been trained in one of the major artistic centres of the time,
probably Thessalonica. The stylistic affinities with the second phase of the
fresco decoration in the church of St Nicholas at Kalamos71 and with one of the
70 Georgios Tsantilas, “Η λατρεία του Αγίου Προκοπίου την περίοδο των Σταυροφόρων και
η βιογραφική εικόνα του στο Πατριαρχείο Ιεροσολύμων” [“The Cult of St Procopius in the
Crusader Period and his Vita Icon in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem”], Δελτίον της Χριστιανικής
Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας 27 (2006), 245–58.
71 Charalambos Bouras, Athina Kalogeropoulou and Rena Andreadi, Εκκλησίες της Αττικής
[Churches of Attica] (Athens, 1969), pp. 360–62, figs. 327–36; Doula Mouriki, “Stylistic
Trends in Monumental Painting of Greece at the Beginning of the Fourteenth Century,”
in L’art byzantin au début du xive siècle, Symposium de Gračanica 1973 (Belgrade, 1978),
p. 75, fig. 42.