Monumental Art in the Lordship of Athens and Thebes 407
about a century earlier91 whereas in the Kadmeia they demolished the palace
of Saint Omer.92 The wall painting of the so-called Panagia of the Catalans,
from the church of the Prophet Elias at Staropazaro in Athens, now in the
Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens, has been re-dated to the mid-15th
century, i.e. the time of the rule of the Florentine family of the Acciaiuoli, since
the two coats-of-arms depicted on either side of the Virgin have been identi-
fied as belonging to the last duke of Athens Francesco Acciaiuoli (1455–56)
and to the Genoese Lorenzo Spinola.93 Although there are no extant samples
of monumental art produced by the Catalans, written sources testify to their
interest for books.94
Not only is there no evidence of Catalan monumental art in the Duchy
of Athens and Thebes but, moreover, the extant frescoed monuments of the
Orthodox Greeks going back to the time of the Catalan domination are not
very numerous in comparison to the period of Frankish rule. A cave church
on the shore of the now drained lake of Kopais, near Aliartos, dedicated to
Zoodochos Pege or St Blasius, preserves frescoes on the masonry templon
(Figure 11.16) and in the sanctuary dated to the year 1333.95 Although modest
in size and the result of the cooperative donorship of three individuals with
their families, one of whom is a priest, it surprises us with the quality of its
paintings, when compared to other contemporary examples in the region. The
painter seems to be familiar with the artistic developments of the great centres
of his time, such as Thessalonica and Mount Athos, surpassing by far the artis-
tic level of local mural paintings.
Donated by two priests with the same surname (brothers or cousins) and a
layman, the church of the Taxiarches in Desphina on the south slope of Mount
Parnassus was built and decorated in the year 1332, in the time of the reign of
91 Tanoulas, “ ‘Το πολυτιμότερο στολίδι του κόσμου,’ ” pp. 23–65.
92 Symeonoglou, The Topography of Thebes, p. 229; Lock, The Franks, p. 79.
93 L.J.A. Lowenthal, “A Note on the So-Called Panaghia of the Catalans,” Αρχαιολογικά Ανάλεκτα
Αθηνών 4 (1971), 89–91; Katselaki, “Τοιχογραφίες,” in Ο κόσμος του Βυζαντινού Μουσείου, p. 103,
fig. 89; Anastasia Lazaridou, “The ‘Virgin of the Catalans’,” in Heaven and Earth: Art of
Byzantium from Greek Collections, ed. Anastasia Drandaki, Demetra Papanikola-Bakirtzi
and Anastasia Tourta (Athens, 2013), pp. 314–15, no. 164.
94 Kenneth M. Setton, “Catalan Society in Greece in the Fourteenth Century,” in Essays to the
Memory of Basil Laourdas, ed. Louisa Laourdas (Thessalonica, 1975), pp. 278–79, repr. in
Setton, Athens in the Middle Ages (London, 1975), V.
95 Hieronymos (Liapis), Χριστιανική Βοιωτία, 1:430–43; idem, “Η Ζωοδόχος Πηγή της Κωπαΐδος
και οι Καταλανοί” [“Zoodochos Pege in Kopais and the Catalans”], in Γ ́ Διεθνές Συνέδριο
Bοιωτικών Μελετών, 3A:1–13.