Tsigaras Georgios, Monumental painting in the 19th century on Mount Athos. Proposals for a methodological approach
Nineteenth-century monumental painting on Mount Athos is of particular artistic and ideological interest. he theological explorations that occurred in the late 18th and early 19th centuries (the Hesychastic Renaissance, also known as the Kollyvades Movement; Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite) and later historical events (Greek War of Independence, foundation of the Kingdom of Greece, the Tanzimat) also had an impact on how ecclesiastical art evolved on Athos. Two major artistic trends marked this century. he irst sprang from the artistic principles introduced by Dionysius of Fourna. he key vehicles of Dionysius’s spirit are the two big art workshops on Athos, namely the Karpenissi and Galatista painters, as well as other individual painters whose contribution should not be ignored. hese workshops and painters formed a unique, local, Athos-centred artistic language with recognisable features that stem from post-Byzantine artistic tradition, enriched with baroque and rococo elements. Because of the far-reaching spiritual inluence of Mount Athos, this trend also spread to other Balkan regions, and especially to Rhodope and its environs. he second trend emerged around the mid 19th century and is represented by the workshop of the company of Joasaphian painters. his trend was strongly inluenced by the Nazarene art movement and developed distinctive Athonite artistic features. Interestingly, it spread widely throughout the Orthodox world: it was not only conined to the Balkans and Russia, but was even accepted by the clerical and literary circles of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the other three senior patriarchates in the Middle East. In recent years, the painting of this period has been researched by a number of art historians and studies have already been published on the period’s Athonite art. his paper forms part of the broader research conducted on monumental painting on Mount Athos during the 19th century (artistic trends and aesthet ic preferences). It presents the unpublished frescoes from the Aghioi Anargyroi (Holy Unmercenaries) and Koimesis tis heotokou (Dormition) chapels and from the narthex of the Aghia Evphemia (Saint Evphemia) chapel in Xenophontos Monastery. he frescoes are the work of painters from Galatista, as we can tell from the inscription (Aghioi Anargyroi chapel) and from the technique used (Koimesis tis heotokou chapel and narthex of the Aghia Evphemia chapel). he iconographic programme of these small churches is of artistic and iconological interest because it relects the artistic trends and ideological explorations of the irst half of the 19th century on Athos. Furthermore, the fact that the monks of Xenophontos Monastery chose this particular workshop to paint the frescoes in the new wing’s chapels relects the aesthetic preferences of the learned monks who lived at the monastery at the time. It also relects the spiritual tradition that developed in the monastery ater it was converted into a coenobium (monastic community) around 1784, under the leadership of the priest-monk Paisios of Kafsokalyvia.
