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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture On 12/08/11, Christopher Crockett wrote: > From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]> <SNIP> > >....Kastoria. That church has a depiction of Nicholas in its second layer of > painting (ca. 1180): > > http://tinyurl.com/7fhuv57 > > >One might wish to compare the treatment of the head here with the "Dynamic > Style" examples from Gorno Nerezi and Kurbinovo to which Christopher Crockett > has been drawing our attention. > > Incessantly & Tediously. > > Kastoria is in that group, dated (on purely stylistic grounds) by Demus and > Kitzinger [see below] to the mid-12th c. --and thus one of the earliest > surviving examples of the style. See below also for a response on the matter of dating. > i took the opportunity to re-read (after a few decades) on of the very few > articles i've ever been able to find on the Dynamic Style: > > Ernst Kitzinger, “Byzantium and the West in the Second Half of the Twelfth > Century: Problems of Stylistic Relationships,” Gesta, IX, (Papers on the > Renaissance of the Twelfth Century Read at the Symposium Held in the Museum of > Art, Rhode Island School of Design, May 14 and 15, 1969), 1970, pp. 49-56. > > available on JSTOR: > > http://www.jstor.org/stable/766654 The church at Kastoria whose paintings Kitzinger dates in this article to the 1150s is St. Nicholas Kasnitzes. More recent Greek scholarship, summarized by Maria G. Parani on p. 250 of her _Reconstructing the Reality of Images_ (Brill, 2003), tends to date the paintings there a little later (Euthymios N. Tsigaridas, comparing them to the also twelfth-century ones in the katholikon of the Latomou monastery at Thessaloniki, dates them to 1160-1180; Parani concurs) or even to the 1180s (so Doula Mouriki, "Stylistic Trends in Monumental Painting of Greece During the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries", _DOP_ 34/35 [1980/1981], 77-124, esp. pp. 109-110). This is the only church in Kastoria discussed by Kitzinger in this article. By the time he gets to his statement on its dating he has named it several times and now refers to it simply as "Kastoria" -- a form of reference unlikely to mislead careful readers whether or not they are aware of the fact that Kastoria has more than one church with surviving twelfth-century painting. The church at Kastoria in which the portrait in question <http://tinyurl.com/7fhuv57> is found is that of the Agioi Anargyroi. This has two layers of painting; the second, which is clearly in the "Dynamic Style" and which includes this depiction of Nicholas, has been dated to ca. 1180 by Lydie Hadermann-Misguich, _Kurbinovo. Les fresques de Saint-Georges et la peinture byzantine du XIIe siècle_ (Bruxelles, 1975), pp. 582ff. This dating is widely accepted. Best again, John Dillon ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html