Ionian school (painting)
Like the Cretan school, it combined Byzantine traditions with an increasing Western European artistic influence and also saw the first significant depiction of secular subjects.
The early Heptanese school was influenced by Flemish, French, Italian and German engravings.
Another reason for the regional blossoming of arts is the migration of artists from the rest of the Greek world, and especially Crete, to the Heptanese to escape Ottoman rule.
[3] Art in the Heptanese shifted towards Western styles by the end of the 17th century with the gradual abandonment of strict Byzantine conventions and techniques.
Paintings began to have a three-dimensional perspective and the compositions became more flexible using Western realism, departing from the traditional representations that embodied Byzantine spirituality.
[4] Bourgeois portraiture had an emblematic character which emphasised the class, profession and position of the individual in society.
The mature phase of the school of the Ionian Islands echoes the social developments as well as the changes that had occurred in the visual arts.
Theodore Poulakis, Elias Moskos, and Emmanuel Tzanes were the early proponents of the Heptanese school.
Several of Panagiotis Doxaras's Greek-style paintings heavily influenced the new image of the Heptanese school.
[7] His oil paintings modeled after Leonardo da Vinci were not the major driving force of the new Greek art movement.
Some of the proponents of the school included Efstathios Karousos, Nikolaos Kallergis, Spyridon Ventouras, Stylianos Stavrakis and Konstantinos Kontarinis.
The early Heptanese school was heavily characterized by paintings modeled after engravings such as The Fall of Man and Jacob’s Ladder.
The Ionian style defines the art of the Heptanese school which would be traditionally viewed as the maniera greca.
By the middle of the 1700s Zakynthos painter Stylianos Stavrakis created his own version of the Vision of Constantine (Stavarkis).
Artists from Lefkada began to paint a shared theme relating to the life of John Chrysostom.
Spyridon Ventouras created a notable painting called A Scene from the Life of John Chrysostom in 1797.
A pioneer in the change was Panagiotis Doxaras (1662–1729), a Maniot who was taught Byzantine iconography from the Cretan Leos Moskos.
Other contemporary artists of Doxaras were Ieronymos Stratis Plakotos (c.1662-1728), also from Zakynthos, and the Corfiot Stefanos Pazigetis.
Spyridon Skarvellis [el] is best known for his watercolours and Markos Zavitsianos excelled in portrait painting and is considered an outstanding exponent of pictorial art in Greece.
In the new school many artists were invited to teach such as the Italian Raffaello Ceccoli (fl.1839-1852), the French Pierre Bonirote [fr], the German Ludwig Thiersch and the Greeks Stefanos Lantsas [el] and his father, Vikentios.
The books feature records of artists from the Fall of the Byzantine Empire until the onset of modern Greece.
The work is similar to Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects and Bernardo de' Dominici's Vite dei Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti Napolitani.
The books feature many artists from the Heptanese school during the Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassicism, and Romanticism periods in Greek art.
[15] Greece and the European Union have digitally archived hi-resolution paintings, frescoes, and other works of art after the fall of Constantinople (1450-1830).
The Institute of Neohellenic Research cataloged portable icons, church frescoes, and or any other artistic works.
