Cretan school

There was a substantial demand for Byzantine icons in Europe throughout the Middle Ages and, as a Venetian possession since 1204, Crete had a natural advantage and soon came to dominate the supply.

[2] By the late 15th century, Cretan artists had established a distinct icon-painting style, distinguished by "the precise outlines, the modelling of the flesh with dark brown underpaint and dense tiny highlights on the cheeks of the faces, the bright colours in the garments, the geometrical treatment of the drapery, and, finally the balanced articulation of the composition",[3] or "sharp contours, slim silhouettes, linear draperies and restrained movements".

Angelos Akotantos, until recently thought to be a conservative painter of the 17th century, is now, after the discovery of a will dated 1436, seen to have been an innovative artist in fusing Byzantine and Western styles, who survived until about 1457, when the will was actually registered.

The will was made in anticipation of a voyage to Constantinople; several icons were bequeathed to church institutions, some Catholic but mainly Orthodox, and the disposition of his stock of pattern drawings was carefully specified.

[8] The Venetian archives preserve considerable documentation on the trade of artistic icons between Venice and Crete, which by the end of the 15th century had become one of mass production.

The order was placed with three artists by two dealers, one Venetian and one from mainland Greece, and the time between contract date and delivery was set at only forty-five days.

Probably the quality of many such commissioned icons was fairly low, and the dismissive term Madonneri was devised to describe such bulk painters, who later practiced in Italy also, often using a quasi-Byzantine style, and apparently often Greek or Dalmatian individuals.

Production of icons at these levels seems to have led to a glut in the market, and in the following two decades there is much evidence that the Cretan trade declined significantly, as the European demand had been reduced.

About 120 artists can be documented working in Candia (the Venetian name of Chandax, present day Herakleion), in the period 1453–1526, and they had organized a Schuola di San Luca painter's guild, based on the Italian model.

[10] The blending of the Eastern and the Western traditions, and a relaxed interchange between Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic rites led to the "Cretan Renaissance", a golden period for the arts on the island, where both literature and painting flourished.

Some of these painters chose to continue the Byzantine tradition of Constantinople, while others were influenced by the masters of the Venetian Renaissance, such as Giovanni Bellini and Titian.

After the beginning of the 16th century, the Cretan artists once again had more commissions and their works were avidly sought, since they had started to use new motives and to adjust their iconography to the new trends of their era.

He was the most important Greek wall painter of his day, incorporating some Western iconographic and stylistic elements, but remaining essentially Byzantine in spirit.

Jonathan Brown provides a perceptive analysis of the ways that El Greco distinguished himself from other Cretan artists active in Venice, while Richard Mann argues that "none of these painters accepted Renaissance ideas about the relevance of change to the creation of art works".

[21] After the Ottoman occupation of Crete, the centre of Greek painting moved to the Ionian Islands, which remained under Venetian rule until the Napoleonic Wars.

A successive occupation of the Ionian islands by the French and the British allowed the Heptanese to remain the centre of Greek art until the independence of Greece in 1830.

The Institute of Neohellenic Research published three encyclopaedias outlining the records of countless artists from the fall of the Byzantine Empire until the establishment of modern Greece.

The work resembles Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects and Bernardo de' Dominici's Vite dei Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti Napolitani.