Religious painting in the Greek world between Byzantium and the West. Aesthetic searches and ideological approaches from the age of Enlightenment to the generation of the 1930s (Abstract)

Abstract

This communication discusses the parameters of aesthetics of the Byzantine, and its successor Post-Byzantine art, within the dimensions of the European art. The search for historical information about the latter shows a canvas of antitheses where the European 18^th century may have distanced itself from Byzantium and its art, however, in the Orthodox world this relation with the West not only was it preserved but also communicated through the artistic products. Nevertheless, from the Greek Revolution and forth the ambivalence between the European and the Greek Orthodox -almost only religious- art was the rule; this was also true after the foundation of the Greek State where the insufficiency of religious art was showcased. At the same time, the seek for aesthetics in the years that followed intensified and it was only after the apparition of the generation of the 30's that this gap was bridged highlighting the Greekness as a component of the Europeanism.

18th/19th century; the Enlightment; Byzantine/Post-Byzantine art; European art; aesthetic value; Byzantium; West; Greece