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Silver Revetments of Icons from Fourteenth-Century Thessaloniki

Articles

• Λοβέρδου - Τσιγαρίδα, Κάτια
• ΛΟΒΕΡΔΟΥ-ΤΣΙΓΑΡΙΔΑ, Κάτια

Research on the role of Thessaloniki as a centre of the minor arts in the fourteenth century has led to the identification of a significant output of diverse objects in various materials, which served secular and religious needs. An important category of silverwork produced in the city is that of silver-gilt revetments for icons, crosses and sacred codices, works with a tradition in Byzantine art that goes back to the Early Christian period. Workshops of painters of portable icons are combined with workshops for their precious revetments, and the production of these silver revetments is linked with the production of portable icons, especially despotic and for proskynesis. The attribution of some of the surviving revetments to workshops of Thessaloniki is based on two principal factors: on inscriptions which reveal a close relationship between their dedicators and the city, and on tradition, which links them with the city. We believe that there is a strong possibility that revetments displaying technical and stylistic affinities with those attributed to Thessaloniki and which concurrently cover icons by Thessalonikan painters come from workshops in the city. Despite the reservations that have been expressed concerning the validity of attributions based on technical or stylistic similarities, the characteristic correspondences between three published revetments, from Ochrid and Edessa, and the revetment of an icon of the Virgin from the Vatopedi monastery, which has been attributed to Thessaloniki, are striking (Fig. 1). These are two silver-gilt revetments which adorn the main face of two-sided icons from the church of the Peribleptos in Ochrid, which are now in the Skopje Museum (Figs 2 and 3), and the revetment of an icon of Christ Pantocrator (Fig. 4), which is preserved in the Great Lavra monastery on Mt Athos and is associated with the katholikon of the Gavaliotissa monastery in Edessa, regions which are closely connected with the city of Thessaloniki. The comparisons made with the Ochrid revetments lead to the conclusion that these are works governed by the same decorative principle, employ the same techniques and the same decorative compositions, and are differentiated in terms of the decorative motifs. These traits point to the same centre of production, possibly the same workshop and more or less the same date. The icons and their revetments are linked with a tradition that their provenance is the monastery of the Panaghia Psychosostria in Constantinople. Historical texts of the midfourteenth century refer to the donation of this monastery by Emperor Andronikos II to the Bishop of Ochrid, Gregorios, with whom he enjoyed the bond of friendship. Thus, many scholars consider that both icons were a gift from the emperor to the bishop. More recent evidence, however, such as the attribution of their painting and now of their revetments to Thessaloniki, leads us to suppose that their donor may well have been Bishop Gregorios himself, who is known to have offered a monumental narthex to the church of Hagia Sophia at Ochrid, in 1317, and could have donated at the same time two despotic icons with their revetments, made in a major artistic centre, such as Thessaloniki. The icon and its contemporary revetment, which we link with Thessalonikan workshops, were attributed to a gift of the donors of the church of the Panaghia Gavaliotissa in Edessa, Thomas Komnenos Preljub, Despot of Epirus, and his wife Maria Angelina Doukaina Palaiologina, after 1360 and before 1366, and displays affinities with the revetment of the icon of Christ Psychosostis (Saviour of Souls) in Ochrid. The workmanship of this revetment is inferior to that of the other revetments discussed here, which could be attributed to the fact that it is later than these works, which are dated in the first decades of the fourteenth century. Its attribution to a Thessaloniki workshop is based on the correspondences it presents in technical details and in decorative motifs with the revetments that have been ascribed to this city, as well on the fact that it covers an icon whose painting has been attributed to this city, and indeed in the second half of the fourteenth century.

• History and Archaeology
• Arts

• Arts and religion

• http://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/deltion/article/view/4242
• http://dx.doi.org/10.12681/dchae.445