Page 55 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Chapter I
appears as plausible that Panselinos, just like El Greco, thought abstractly while render- ing the compositions which depict the human form. Both in Panselinos’ and in El Gre- co’s work, this phenomenon can be observed even in view of individual figures. For ex- ample, we notice that El Greco’s work Visitation (image 2) conveys the two figures almost as abstract shapes that vibrate in mid-air. The same can be observed in El Greco’s Concert of Angels (image 56), which strikingly reminds us of Kandinsky’s concept of the “musi- calisation of composition.”
•
One of the most significant groups of frescoes from the Palaiologan period is found in the chapel of St Euthymios, a small basilica located in the southeast corner of the great basilica of St Demetrius in Thessaloniki. These frescoes, rendered most likely by ‘Manuel Panselinos’ and his associates, date to 1303 (according to an inscription on the north wall). Their patrons were the distinguished members of the royal court of Andronikos II Palaiologos: Mihail Doukas Glavas Tarhaneiotis and his wife Maria Doukaina Komnini Palaiologina Vranaina, who besides the chapel of St Euthymios have renewed the church of Pamakaristou in Constantinople.37
The chapel of St Euthymios is the only in Thessaloniki which contains a complete iconographic program designed for a proper church building.38 Its frescoes are of great significance and their early date in the history of the new painterly style alludes to their likely influence on the work of painters who were active in the subsequent decades. The sense of monumentality with which they radiate, in spite of the micrographic rendering of the compositions (within a chapel which itself is a micro version of the basilica), makes an immediate impression.39 We shall see below how this particular achievement might have influenced the work of other painters of the same school.
In the Palaiologan period the uniqueness of the individual talent evoked more atten- tion among the patrons of art, and thus painters begun to sign their work – which was not a common practice until then. We know that a painter from Thessaloniki, Mihail Astrapas and his assistant Eutychios, have in 1294/5 worked in the church of Perivleptos in Achrida (FYROM).
The work of Mihail and Eutychios in Perivleptos constitutes a transitional phase of their development, which is to reach its peak in the first two decades of the 14th century –where their style becomes even closer to the style of frescoes at Protaton. As can be
37 Μαρία Καμπούρη-Βαμβούκου και Θανάσης Παπαζώτος, Η Παλαιολόγεια Ζωγραφική στη Θεσσαλονίκη (Αθήνα: Εκδόσεις Εξάντας, 2003), 14.
38 Ibid. 39 Ibid.
53