Monumental Art in the Lordship of Athens and Thebes 415
liturgical hymnography and practice accompanying the images of the Church
Fathers, such as ἡ φρόνησις (prudence), for John Chrysostom or Basil in the
church of St George at Orkos in the plain of Megara, and ἡ γνῶσις (knowledge),
ἡ φρόνησις (prudence), ἡ βρύσις τῶν θαυμάτων ( fountain of miracles), ἡ καινὴ
φύσις (new nature), for Basil, John Chrysostom, Nicholas and Gregory respec-
tively in the south chapel of the Spelia Pentelis also relate the monuments
in Attica to one another.123 In addition, Byzantine art historians have singled
out certain iconographic or stylistic features going back to or copying middle
Byzantine models. The full length image of the enthroned Pantokrator in the
dome of the church of Soteras at Megara, for example, copies the equivalent
figure in the monastery church of St Hierotheos, dated to the third quarter of
the 12th century.124
Nonetheless, this artistic entity bearing regional characteristics which
continues the Komnenian tradition shares common features with the domi-
nant style of the 13th and 14th centuries in nearly all regions of the Eastern
Mediterranean under Latin or Venetian rule: the mixture of retrospective and
progressive elements in iconography and style, a provincial quality sometimes
characterised by a popular taste, linearity, simplification, and schematisation
of the artistic means. The shared—Greco-Roman and Byzantine—cultural
and artistic past of these regions and common socio-economic conditions
imposed by the Latins explain the uniformity of this style, the stylistic koine
of the time. In fact, the degree of assimilation of the progressive features var-
ies; there are gradations in quality and rare exceptions of “imported” art from
great centres.
The recapture of Constantinople in 1261 by the Byzantines generated a sense
of optimism and euphoria in the liberated provinces, such as the Peloponnese,
evident both in the great number of newly founded or re-founded and
(re-)decorated churches and in the quality of the frescoes, a fact which is
not recorded in the Latin-held regions. Nonetheless, a re-orientation towards
Constantinople after 1261 in the duchy is observed. The dedicatory inscription
of the Omorphe Ekklesia in Aegina is eloquent in this respect. The unknown
123 Stoufi-Poulimenou, Βυζαντινές εκκλησίες, pp. 113, 127; Mouriki, “Oι βυζαντινές τοιχογραφίες
της Σπηλιάς της Πεντέλης,” p. 91; Konstantinidi, Ο Μελισμός, p. 130.
124 Doula Mouriki, “Ο ζωγραφικός διάκοσμος του τρούλλου του Αγίου Ιεροθέου κοντά στα Μέγαρα”
[“The Painted Decoration of the Dome of St Hierotheos near Megara”], Αρχαιολογικά Ανάλεκτα
Αθηνών 1 (1978), 116; Grigoriadou-Cabagnols, “Affinités iconographiques,” pp. 38–39, pl. viii;
Stoufi -Poulimenou, Βυζαντινές εκκλησίες, pp. 152–53. In addition, Maria Aspra-Vardavaki, “Οι
βυζαντινές τοιχογραφίες του Ταξιάρχη,” p. 222 has observed in the church of the Taxiarches at
Markopoulo, that the draperies of certain prophets in the dome are rendered in a way that
recalls the garments of the prophets in the dome of the katholikon at Daphni.