#THEODOR GREEK ICONOGRAPHER SERIES#

The over painting with the identical underneath lying present picture is already considered a sacred act 19. An intact iconographic condition guaranties the symbolic completeness and thus also the liturgical function of conveyance (which would be refuted by multiple sections of voids) 18. This kind of treatment is closely tied up with the symbolic content of the Icon 17. Cult-images with multiple losses within the paint layer and/or voids within the painting structure or a strongly darkened Olifa (a kind of oil varnish in Russia) have been over painted with economic 15 and religious aspects taken into consideration 16. 174.)ĩOver-painting: Into the second third of the 19th century all treatments (conservation, restoration) on the Icon are aimed at the function of the Icon 14. A conscientious teacher, but interested to experience new ideas and always open to new trends, Nikiforos Lytras became the leading Greek artist of his time, popular with the people and honoured by his students and fellow artists. In 1866 Lytras was back in Greece and was appointed professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts, a position he held for 38 productive years. An exceptional talent, Lytras studied at the Athens School of Art from 1850 until 1860 and then, as the recipient of a state scholarship, he continued his studies at the Munich Academy, in the class of Karl von Piloty. Nikiforos Lytras, the painter of Kanaris Burning the Turkish Flagship in Metsovo, was born in Pyrgi, on the Cycladic island of Tinos, the son of a marble sculptor.

Thus, in contrast to the ambiguous treatment of the background, where the ship disappears half-hidden by the smoke, the realistic rendering of the Psarians with Kanaris in the boat gives the work the immediacy and truth that interested the artist.”

The flaming ship is thrust into the distance to form the backdrop for the human action that is played out on a plane close to the viewer. More so it was the projection of the heroic act carried out by brave persons worthy of emulation. Lytras’s painting on the heroic deed by Konstantinos Kanaris is a historic painting with a twist! The artist moves away “from the romantic tendency that prevailed in the School of Piloty to a more naturalistic one in which the genre element played the dominant role.” According to the description provided by the Averoff Museum “Lytras` anthropocentric painting… was not concerned so much with the historical event per se.

#THEODOR GREEK ICONOGRAPHER SERIES#

This is a rare series of the lithographs of Krazeisen, which are hand-painted. Greek and Philhellene Fighters in the Greek Revolution of 1821, Portraits of the German officer and Philhellene Karl Krazeisen Naturalism in its depiction of human emotions was not among the School’s greatest artistic pursuits. The artists of the Akademie were committed to monumental history paintings, landscapes, ethnography, portraits and still life. An influential Art School, the Münchner Akademie, attracted and trained artists from around the world to become leading painters, able to combine in their style, academic realism, baroque colourism and dark chiaroscuro. Kanaris Burning the Turkish Flagship is an amazing departure from what Nykiforos Lytras studied in the Münchner Akademie der Bildenden Künste under the tutelage of Karl Theodor von Piloty (1826-1886). You cannot miss it… It is one of the most captivating 19th-century Greek paintings. Every time I travel to Metsovo, in the Epirote mountains of Pindos, in Northern Greece, I visit the Averoff Gallery and stop in front of Nikiforos Lytras’s painting Kanaris Burning the Turkish Flagship.

Theodor greek iconographer