Italo-Byzantine

These are versions of Byzantine icons, most of the Madonna and Child, but also of other subjects; essentially they introduced the relatively small portable painting with a frame to Western Europe.

[7] According to John Steer, "down to the thirteenth century ... all Italian local schools [of painting] were provincial variants of the central Byzantine tradition".

[17] Maniera greca had a different meaning from the 17th century, when it described a trend in Baroque sculpture especially associated with Francois Duquesnoy, a Flemish sculptor working in Rome and his pupils such as Rombaut Pauwels.

The portable panel painting was not a usual form in the West before this,[20] though a few Byzantine examples had arrived, and were often highly revered, and a few had been locally produced, like the possibly 7th-century Madonna della Clemenza.

[27] The maniera greca survived being replaced by the top Italian painters, indeed became more common, as increasing prosperity and cheap Cretan imports spread the possibility of owning an icon for the home down the economic scale.

[28] By 1615, one study showed that a remarkable 81% of the households of Venetian labourers possessed artworks of some sort; when icons, these would have mostly have been very small, and perhaps mostly Cretan imports (see below).

[29] The Cretan icon-industry was already adopting more up to date Western styles, with some success, and the slow loss of Crete to the Ottomans from 1645 to 1669 seriously interrupted supplies.

This was partly because of the perceived authenticity of the compositions or poses of Byzantine icons, which were believed, and proclaimed by the Orthodox, to have remained unchanged since the very beginning of Christianity, and in several cases to derive either from miraculous acheiropoieta or "icons not made by human hands", or from supposed portrait paintings of Christ or the Virgin painted from the life, by Saint Luke or others.

[33] Famous versions of the sculpted type include the Gero Cross (Cologne, 10th-century), the Holy Face of Lucca (originally 11th-century or earlier), and the 12th-century Catalan Batlló Majesty.

[34] Of the painted versions the San Damiano cross of about 1100 is one of few early survivals; perhaps it has only remained intact because Francis of Assisi had a revelation in front of it around 1206.

[35] It was to make works such as these that Italian panel painters had presumably been trained, as well as combinations of frescos, the painting of sculpture in both wood and stone, and illuminating manuscripts.

[40] 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.

[41] 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 practised 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.

El Greco was trained in this part of the Cretan industry, running his own workshop for a few years before he emigrated to Italy in 1567, at the age of about 26.