Mural painting in Karyes (Mt Athos) from the fifteenth to the early ninteenth century

Abstract

This article traces the evidence of the artistic production at Karyes, the administrative centre of Mount Athos. The various cells scattered in the landscape, some of which were once monasteries, are today the only witnesses of a monumental painting activity whose earliest example can be dated in the first half of the 14^th century and the latest one in the first decades of the 19^th century. In the middle, however, lay the early 16^th century ensembles which consist the ‘missing link' of a succession in the stylistic trends from the Late Palaiologan style to that of the "Cretan school", or those of the early 18^th century painted by the hand of Dionysios of Fourna who intentionally brought again to the fore the prototypes of the 13^th century.