414 Kalopissi-Verti
in Orthodox churches built by the Greek-speaking native population in ex-
Byzantine provinces is extremely rare. There is a parallel in Venetian-held
Crete, in the dedicatory inscription of the church of the Archangel Michael
in Kavalariana at Kandanos Selinou (1327/28) where the Venetian rulers are
mentioned.119 In addition, two 13th-century inscriptions in Asia Minor men-
tion both the Byzantine emperor and the Seljuk ruler.120
Continuity, Locality and Universality
Certain specific features in iconography, ornaments, and style encountered in
the mural paintings of Attica and Boeotia which date back to the Frangokratia
i.e. the time of Latin rule, although used sporadically in other regions as well,
seem to point to a local art rooted in the middle Byzantine period. A local char-
acteristic, for example, seems to be the depiction of saints’ figures, especially
hierarchs, under a painted arcade supported on colonettes occurring as early
as the church of the Metamorphosis in Koropi in the beginning of the 11th
century121 and then repeated in 13th-century monuments, such as the south
chapel in Spelia Pentelis, and the churches of Soteras at Megara, Taxiarches
at Markopoulo, Soteras at Maroussi.122 Moreover, inscriptions inspired by the
119 Angeliki Lymberopoulou, Church of the Archangel at Kavalariana: Art and Society on
Fourteenth-Century Venetian-Dominated Crete (London, 2006), pp. 194–217,
120 The inscription in the church of Panagia Spelaiotissa in Sille/Lykaonia (1288/89) men-
tions the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos ii (1282–1328) and the Seljuk Sultan of Rūm
Masud ii (1284–1297 and 1303–1307), Nikos Bees, Die Inschriftenaufzeichnung des Kodex
Sinaiticus Graecus 508 (976) und die Maria-Spiläotissa-Klosterkirche bei Sille (Lykaonien).
Texte und Forschungen zur byzantinisch-neugriechischen Philologie 1 (Berlin, 1992), p. 7;
Klaus Belke, Galatien und Lykaonien, Tabula Iimperii Byzantini 4 (Vienna, 1984), pp. 234–
35; Sophie Métivier, “Byzantium in Question in 13th-Century Seljuk Anatolia,” in Liquid
and Multiple: Individuals and Identities in the Thirteenth-Century Aegean, ed. Guillaume
Saint-Guillain and Dionysios Stathakopoulos (Paris, 2012), p. 241. The inscription in
St George at Belisirama in Cappadocia (1283–1295) also mentions Andronikos ii and
Masud ii: Nicole Thierry and Michel Thierry, Nouvelles églises rupestres de Cappadoce:
Région de Hasan Daği (Paris; 1963), pp. 202–204; Métivier, “Byzantium in Question,” p. 239.
See also, Mitsani, “Οι τοιχογραφίες του Αγίου Νικολάου Μαύρικα,” pp. 371–73.
121 Maria Panayotidi, “La peinture monumentale en Grèce de la fin de l’iconoclasme jusqu’à
l’avènement des Comnènes (843–1081),” Cahiers Archéologiques 34 (1986), 89.
122 Mouriki, “Oι βυζαντινές τοιχογραφίες της Σπηλιάς της Πεντέλης,” p. 84, pls. 21–23; Stoufi-
Poulimenou, Βυζαντινές εκκλησίες, p. 152, fig. 64; Aspra-Vardavaki, “Οι βυζαντινές τοιχογραφίες
του Ταξιάρχη,” pp. 219–20, pl. 106; Mouzakis, Βυζαντινές–Μεταβυζαντινές Εκκλησίες Βόρειας
Αττικής, p. 36.