24
Gothic in the East: Western Architecture in Byzantine Lands
Medieval Western art and architecture were transplanted to the islands and around the shores of the eastern Mediterranean as a result of the Crusades. The objective of this chapter is to trace the development of the study of this art in territories previously under Byzantine rule where the Crusaders established states in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Cyprus, Aegean islands, Greek mainland, Constantinople).1 The coverage of this wide geographical area will necessarily be uneven, for it is conditioned by the chronological limits imposed by the editors of this volume, by the nature and extent of the surviving material, and of course by the scholarly interest the latter has attracted over the years. Thus, relatively little will be said about mainland Greece, even less about the Aegean islands and Constantinople, while Cyprus will loom large in the discussion, focused mainly on architecture. I hope the reasons for this will become clear in the course of what follows.
Any discussion of the art of these lands in a volume devoted to Romanesque and Gothic art is bound to raise some pertinent questions: What is the relationship between what one might classify as “Gothic” and “Crusader”? Are they identical or do they merely overlap? Does one form a subdivision of the other? What do we mean exactly when we talk of the art of the principality of the Morea or of the Lusignan kingdom of Cyprus? Gothic is certainly part of it, but not necessarily identical with it, for the artistic production of the Latin states was much more diverse. Although perhaps easier to distinguish “Gothic” in architecture, in other art forms the borders are much more blurred, with the Byzantine heritage of these lands playing a defining role.2
The kingdom of Cyprus was established after the island’s conquest during the Third Crusade (1191) and survived into the late fifteenth century. Its longevity thus surpassed that of any other Crusader state – with the exception of some Venetian colonies in the Aegean. What is more, the island kingdom led a rather stable existence, and for a short period it became remarkably prosperous too. The same cannot be said of the post-1204 creations further west. In sharp contrast to the unified centralized state of Lusignan Cyprus, it was fragmentation of the political landscape which characterized the southern Balkans and the Aegean, with Venice, and to a lesser extent Genoa, playing a leading role, especially in the islands. The former ruled Crete (1205–1669), Euboea (1209–1470), and other scattered outposts, while the latter established colonies mainly in the eastern Aegean. The Latin empire of Constantinople and the kingdom of Thessalonike were both short-lived (1204–61 and 1204–24 respectively). The duchies of Athens (1205–1456) and of the Archipelago (1207–1566) struggled for both stability and prosperity with frequent changes of rule. Only the principality of the Morea (1204–1460) comes somewhat close to the Cypriot experience, with its feudal organization imposed on a predominantly Greek Orthodox indigenous population over a relatively large territory under a ruling class of Western origin. Yet the fates of the Morea and Cyprus were far from alike: whereas the thirteenth century marked the apogee of the principality under the Villehardouins, followed by a period of slow decline, Cyprus witnessed its most glorious days in the fourteenth century. This is unavoidably reflected in the two regions’ artistic output.
The conditions prevailing earlier in the various newly conquered territories varied enormously and affected the subsequent artistic and especially building activity. The case of Constantinople was unique: when the Latin empire was established, it took over a large metropolis, ancient capital and nerve center of an old empire, where there was no real need for new constructions. Indeed, there is little evidence of building activity during the short life of the Latin empire, although it has to be said that the production of portable works of art at that time still remains little known. In Cyprus and the Morea, however, the situation was altogether different. In the former the new settlers found a relatively prosperous island, although its infrastructure was presumably not up to standard for the requirements of an independent kingdom with a resident aristocracy and a royal court. This is abundantly clear from the fact that the Byzantine past of the main urban settlements has almost entirely disappeared under a Gothic layer. So much so that, although Cyprus cannot compete with Syria in the field of Crusader military architecture, its cities nevertheless offer the largest and most elaborate specimens of ecclesiastical architecture in the Latin East (fig. 24–1). The island also provides the best example of Gothic monastic architecture surviving in this part of the world: although partly in ruins, the abbey of Bellapais preserves its fourteenth-century refectory, one of the largest still standing anywhere, in almost pristine condition.3
One would expect to encounter a similar situation in the Morea too. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise. The group of religious buildings, all in a ruinous state now, is very small and not particularly impressive in terms of architectural elaboration. The most important among them, the church at Isova and St Sophia at Andravida (the cathedral of the principality’s capital city), were large but rather plain timber-roofed basilicas, with vaults over their sanctuaries only. Although the Cistercian church at Zaraka was vaulted throughout, like the other churches it lacks the careful construction and rather elaborate ornamentation of the Cypriot examples. On Cyprus, few castles were built because of both the protection provided by the sea and the centralized character of the state, lacking powerful feudal lords. In the Morea, on the other hand, conditions were quite different and some 50 castles survive from the principality’s days. Like the three castles of the Kyrenia mountains in Cyprus, but unlike those in Syria-Palestine, these are mostly roughly built strongholds with few architectural pretensions, much altered in subsequent centuries, and little documented in the sources. As a result, their chronology remains very difficult to establish. What is more, their state of preservation is usually rather poor. In fact, this is a recurrent problem with the monuments of mainland Greece and the islands, which have suffered enormously from neglect, wanton destruction, but most regrettably from careless restoration.
FIGURE 24-1 Cathedral of St Nicholas, Famagusta. Reproduced courtesy of The Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Photo: Robert Byron.
The architectural legacy of Lusignan Cyprus also suffered serious losses which started occurring early on, as a result of both natural disasters and military confrontation. But the most serious documented losses are due to defensive needs imposed by the Ottoman threat during the Venetian period: in 1567 several important buildings in Nicosia, including the Dominican abbey which housed the royal tombs, and dozens of churches, were demolished by the authorities when it was decided to replace the old (mostly fourteenth-century) walls by a modern defensive system in anticipation of an attack.4
After 1571 the Ottomans took over the major centers of Latin settlement and power on the island, namely Nicosia and Famagusta. Thus, by a strange twist of fate, many of those Gothic structures which survived over the centuries did so because of their conversion into mosques and their subsequent maintenance by the new masters, although most of their figural decoration was destroyed (fig. 24-2). Travelers to the island occasionally mentioned or depicted the most conspicuous among them.5 But despite a steady, albeit limited, flow of visitors, in particular during the eighteenth century, Cyprus, unlike Greece, never became part of the Grand Tour, both because of the relative geographical remoteness of the island and because of the distinct lack of standing classical remains. Thus it remained isolated from the scholarly world of Western Europe, where in any case interest in Gothic architecture was not developed until the later eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.
Scholarship on Cyprus witnessed a dramatic surge in the course of the nineteenth century. A massive history of the Lusignan kingdom based on extensive and original archival research was published by Louis de Mas Latrie (1815–97).6 His notes on the monuments of that period, taken during his visit in 1846, were subsequently used by Melchior de Vogüé (1829–1916) who included a very short overview of the Lusignan material in his pioneering book on the churches of the Holy Land (1860). In this, the work that signaled the beginning of scholarly research into Crusader architecture, de Vogüé described very briefly the main buildings of Nicosia and Famagusta as well as the abbey at Bellapais. He devoted a longer section to Hospitaller Rhodes and its numerous, mostly fifteenth-century monuments.7
FIGURE 24-2 Cathedral of St Sophia, Nicosia. Reproduced courtesy of The Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Photo: C. J. P. Cave.
In 1862 he led himself an expedition to Cyprus. His principal aim, however, was to extend Ernest Renan’s Phoenician mission to the island.8 He was accompanied by, among others, a young Frenchman, Edmond Duthoit (1837–89), whom Viollet-le-Duc had recommended as draughtsman to the mission. Duthoit was genuinely impressed by the island’s medieval buildings, both Byzantine and Gothic. To him we owe the first extensive visual record of these structures: during his four-month tour the indefatigable Duthoit made dozens of accurate drawings and watercolors of churches, monasteries, fortifications, archaeological sites, and city views, as well as a few measured drawings. The significance of Duthoit’s work remains undervalued: it lies not only in its sheer quality, but more importantly in that it depicts buildings which have since been altered beyond recognition, restored, or have simply disappeared. It is all the more amazing then that this unique collection of well over one hundred drawings remained virtually unknown, as it lay buried in the archives of the Musée de Picardie at Amiens until the 1990s, when it was rediscovered and published.9 There is little doubt that had Duthoit’s work become available in the 1860s it would have certainly precipitated the study of the island’s medieval heritage. In the event this had to wait until the end of the century.
Meanwhile Emmanuel-Guillaume Rey (1837–1916), who had already been to Cyprus in 1857 and later helped de Vogüé in his mission by providing maps and sketches, was emulating the latter’s work and at the same time complementing it with a study of military architecture in the Holy Land. Unlike his mentor, however, Rey included in his 1871 publication an extensive report on the major castles, fortifications, and watch-towers of Cyprus, some of it derived from second-hand information provided yet again by Mas Latrie, but also by de Vogüé himself and by Duthoit.10
De Vogüé, and to a certain extent Rey, treated the Cyprus material as a mere appendix to the Holy Land, and this from a primarily French point of view. Both were of course products of their age, and in their mind the Crusades, and by extension their legacy in the Levant, were part of French history. As we shall see below, this attitude persisted for a long time and is mirrored in more recent scholarship. But the era of French domination in Crusader art history on Cyprus was soon to be challenged, although by no means eclipsed, by scholars from the new power that came to rule the island.
In 1878 the administration of Cyprus was entrusted to the British empire. For the first time British scholars were drawn to the archaeology of the new and little-known acquisition. Like some of his French predecessors, Edward L’Anson arrived initially in search of classical remains. Not surprisingly the sheer presence of the Gothic monuments diverted his attention. In November 1882 he presented a report to the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, which was then published together with notes, sketches, and a small number of measured drawings by Sydney Vacher.11 These plans and sections were the first to be published for the main Gothic churches of Cyprus (Rey had published only two attractive albeit inaccurate plans of the castles at St Hilarion and Buffavento). Vacher provided a reconstruction of the western façade of the cathedral at Famagusta too, and the report was supplemented with 97 inscriptions from funerary slabs already published by Mas Latrie.12 Despite L’Anson’s RIBA presentation, British interest in the Gothic monuments of Cyprus was rather slow to develop.
Still, the 1890s were a period of considerable activity, not least for members of the colonial administration: Major J. Chamberlayne Tankerville, later governor of Kyrenia, published in 1894 some 300 fragments from funerary slabs preserved in five churches of Nicosia, in a corpus dedicated to Mas Latrie. Cyprus preserves by far the largest number of such sepulchral monuments in the Latin East and this was the first and only attempt to supplement the information provided by their inscriptions with genealogical tables and numerous drawings.13
In September 1896 Charles Diehl (1859–1944), well known as a historian of Byzantium, visited Cyprus while on a cruise in the eastern Mediterranean. In a brief report published shortly thereafter he focused on Famagusta where he disembarked, but, just like earlier scholars, he remained completely oblivious to the existence in the medieval period of cultures other than that of the Latin rulers of the island.14 This was also the attitude of the man to whom the study of Western architecture on Cyprus undoubtedly owes the most.
Camille Enlart (1862–1927) visited Cyprus only a few months before Diehl, from February to June 1896, under the auspices of the Ministère de l’instruction publique et des beaux-arts.15 He arrived on the island with a deep knowledge of medieval architecture and sculpture, especially those of his native France. His extended field trip resulted in a two-volume work, published in 1899 and dedicated to the Marquis de Vogüé.16 Two years earlier he had also published a brief survey of a somewhat arbitrary selection of Gothic monuments in Greece. His assessment was most severe: “lorsque des architectes nourris de l’enseignement des maîtres gothiques français ont eu l’occasion de construire sur le sol de la Grèce, ils ont donné à peu-près la mesure de ce que leur art pouvait produire de plus faible.”17 This is a far cry from his enthusiastic comments about the Cypriot monuments, to which he returned in 1901 in order to conduct limited excavations in Famagusta and Nicosia.18 Back in France, he was soon appointed director of the Musée de sculpture comparée (now the Musée des monuments français at the Trocadéro), where among the exhibits illustrating the evolution of French sculpture were included several panels with drawings, watercolors, and photographs demonstrating the successful export of French art to faraway Cyprus.19 Enlart continued throughout his career to analyze and reassess the material he gathered in Cyprus. In a book published in 1920 on medieval cities from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, after a short passage on Paphos, he dedicated a long chapter to Famagusta, bringing together testimonies from the written record with evidence from its numerous monuments.20
Enlart’s contribution to the study of Crusader art on Cyprus cannot be overestimated. Not only was he the first to investigate in detail the numerous Gothic buildings, producing the first ever comprehensive study for the monuments of any period on the island, but in his lifelong work on the propagation of medieval French art outside its cradle he also used extensively a recent tool which was to become indispensable in art historical studies, namely photography, and in fact he was among the first art historians to do so during his extensive travels.21
One should bear in mind that, despite the brief earlier studies mentioned above, at the time of Enlart’s visit relatively little was known about Gothic in Cyprus. Unlike his later and ground-breaking work on the kingdom of Jerusalem, which was greatly helped by the work of earlier archaeologists and art historians, Enlart had pretty little to rely on for Cyprus. He nevertheless surveyed some 50 sites all over the island, although obviously his attention was focused on the main towns, Famagusta and Nicosia. His L’Art gothique et la renaissance opens with an engaging discussion on the origins and evolution of Gothic in Cyprus which contains the main conclusions of his research. It remains to this day the most important attempt to place the architecture of the Lusignan kingdom within its context, which for Enlart was bound to be predominantly French, for the precedence of France in Crusader art was taken for granted: the main areas of influence were identified as Northern France, Champagne, and Southern France, with Catalan and Venetian input admitted for the end of the period. His photographs for the most part are the first ever published of these monuments and remain an important witness to their state in the late nineteenth century, before the various repairs carried out under British administration.22 His approximately 40 measured drawings, with very few exceptions, have still to be superseded by more detailed and accurate versions.
Our judgment of Enlart’s work, more than one century after its publication, cannot ignore subsequent research. It is thus clear, for example, that the small group of churches in the Karpas peninsula, which he mistakenly identified as Romanesque and dated to the twelfth century, is in fact of much earlier date and has no relation whatsoever to Western architecture.23 Some of his identifications have also been questioned, and the phases into which he divided the Gothic of Cyprus have been revised.24 Enlart was unavoidably a man of his times. Today’s concerns with cultural interchange and the contribution of indigenous communities are, not surprisingly, absent from his agenda. This is surely due to a great extent to his emphasis on architecture, to the detriment of other forms of artistic expression where such factors may have played a more dominant role. Had Enlart been able to examine closely the panel paintings and monumental decorations in rural chapels of the Lusignan era, virtually unknown at the time, he would have certainly formed a rather different opinion.
We have seen above that there is a continuous thread from Mas Latrie, the first to have brought to the attention of the outside world the existence of the striking monuments of Lusignan Cyprus in the mid-nineteenth century, to Enlart at the turn of the century, through de Vogüé, Renan, Duthoit, Rey, and Tankerville. This virtual line of succession, built on the sharing of information among scholars who often relied on each other’s work, came to an end in the early twentieth century. Its last and little-known representative was, not surprisingly, also a Frenchman. Achille Carlier, just like Enlart, was a student at the French School in Rome and subscribed fully to his illustrious precursor’s views: he placed the Gothic of Cyprus firmly in the context of French medieval art, whose staunch and militant defender he was soon to become with his journal, Les Pierres de France, aimed at drawing attention to the need for the protection and careful restoration of the Gothic monuments of his homeland.25 Carlier is known to have made detailed large-scale measured drawings of the cathedral in Famagusta and to have compiled a photographic dossier of Gothic architecture on the island. Nevertheless, his 1933 field trip resulted in only one published article. What is more, this appeared in a journal little known to art historians and appears to have had little impact. Significantly though, it was introduced by Paul Deschamps (1888–1974), who held the same post as Enlart earlier, that of director of the Musée de sculpture comparée, and to whom Enlart had entrusted toward the end of his life the study of Crusader castles in Syria-Palestine which he had not been able to undertake himself.26
Carlier’s article appeared under the telling title Les Villes françaises de Chypre, and its aim was, not surprisingly, to demonstrate the predominantly French character of the urban landscape of Lusignan Cyprus, and in particular of Famagusta. Stating his case in even stronger terms than his earlier compatriots and with extraordinary enthusiasm, Carlier boldly declared Cyprus the “province de l’archéologie française la plus authentique et la plus brillante.”27 No doubt Enlart would have wholeheartedly agreed. Interest in the Crusader monuments of Cyprus during the nineteenth century had of course been inextricably linked to, and was indeed seen as forming an integral part of, the study of Crusader art on the mainland. This was not a perspective much in view in the work of our next major figure.
George Jeffery’s (1855–1935) career in Cyprus dates to the years between Enlart’s and Carlier’s field trips. An architect by training, active in Jerusalem for a while and particularly keen on medieval architecture, Jeffery first visited Cyprus at about the same time as Enlart; he soon settled on the island to become its first Curator of Ancient Monuments (1903–34). In 1897 he produced the first (a short article) in a long series of works on Cypriot monuments published over almost four decades.28 Unlike Enlart, however, Jeffery’s perspective on medieval architecture was resolutely Cypriot in the sense that the wider picture, whether within a Crusader, French Gothic, or Constantinopolitan framework, was not a main concern of his. He was indeed more interested in the preservation of all testimonies of past civilizations – be they products of the Byzantine, Lusignan, Venetian, or Ottoman period – threatened by neglect or outright demolition in the changing rural and urban landscape of the early British period.
Thus, his magnum opus was a survey of all buildings of historical significance on the island.29 The heritage of the Lusignan centuries of course looms large throughout the book, which remains to this day a standard work of reference, not least because of its almost exhaustive coverage in particular of the rural areas, a hitherto terra incognita as far as this type of study is concerned. Jeffery also published detailed short studies of individual buildings, some with accurate measured drawings on a scale much more appropriate for their meticulous study than that used by Enlart.
By the middle of the twentieth century, attitudes toward the Crusades were changing in contemporary historiography. The largely sympathetic views of the nineteenth century were being replaced by a more skeptical and sometimes openly negative assessment.30 In Crusader art history the focus was slowly moving away from architecture to embrace the study of hitherto neglected forms, mainly manuscripts and icons. As far as Cyprus is concerned, no substantial art historical study was to appear, however, until well into the second half of the century. In the meantime, on a practical level little had been done in the early years of the British administration, despite Jeffery’s valiant efforts to protect from vandalism and to strengthen structures in a parlous state. A severe lack of funds and the reluctance of the colonial government to invest in the study and preservation of the island’s medieval heritage hampered any individual efforts to that effect. It was only in the 1930s that a considerable increase in activities involving both limited excavations and repairs took place.31 The unsatisfactory situation prevailing earlier changed to a great extent as a result of the creation of the Department of Antiquities in 1935. The island’s Lusignan heritage remained at the top of the agenda for both its Directors before Independence, during the short tenure of J. R. Hilton (1935) but especially during A. H. S. Megaw’s long and productive period at the helm of the Department (1936–60).32
The monuments of Greece, especially those in the Peloponnese and Crete, were attracting far more attention in the opening decades of the century. Following Enlart’s short article of 1897, Giovanni Gerola carried out a large detailed study of the monuments of the period of Venetian rule on Crete33 and Ramsay Traquair published an article on the castles of Laconia and a longer survey of the principal churches of Frankish Greece, the latter heavily and often inappropriately dependent for the dating of monuments on Enlart’s Cyprus book.34 But it was left to André Bon to carry out detailed research in the 1920s and’30s on the monuments of the Peloponnese, doing for the Morea what Enlart had done for Cyprus. This was published as part of a larger work on the history, topography, and archaeology of Frankish Morea; what is more, unlike Enlart, Bon was well acquainted with the earlier history and monuments of the region too, on which he also published the main work of reference.35 His Morée franque, however, did not appear in print until the late 1960s.36 The work of another pioneer on the art history of the Crusader East had a similar fate.
Tom Boase (1898–1974) was commissioned to write the chapters on Crusader art in the Latin East for Kenneth Setton’s History of the Crusades in the 1940s. Using the ample photographic and other documentation gathered by David Wallace in the 1930s, Boase gave a succinct and, in its assessment, rather dismissive overview of churches, castles, sculpture, and painting in Constantinople, Euboea, Crete, the Aegean islands, and the Greek mainland. For Rhodes, dealt with in a separate section, the stress lay on the high quality of the late medieval Hospitaller monuments compared to what survives on mainland Greece, although time and again Boase deplores the destruction and inappropriate restoration which most of these structures underwent and which often hampers their proper study. His assessment of the Cypriot material was much more positive.37
Based on Enlart, for whose work he had immense respect, Boase provided an overview of the architecture of the Lusignan kingdom. By the 1940s the island’s Byzantine monuments and its frescoes and icons from the Lusignan era had become better known compared to Enlart’s days half a century earlier, thanks to a couple of important recent publications.38 These provided Boase with additional material with which to assess the art of the period. Hence his great contribution: as in the case of his studies on the arts of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, for the first time an attempt was made to view all forms of artistic production together, as a whole. In the case of Cyprus this meant the dramatic expansion of the corpus of Crusader works of art beyond the Gothic churches and their sculptural decoration: it introduced for the first time into the discussion fresco cycles, icons, illuminated manuscripts, and even textiles and ceramics. The only regret one might express about this novel approach is that it was not carried even further, that these works of art and the attempted synthesis were not discussed in greater detail. But Boase innovated in another respect too, largely as a result of his forays into the world of art forms other than architecture: the vital input of sources other than the West, emanating from local traditions, was now being considered, and has remained a constant preoccupation of scholarship ever since. Through no fault of his, the fourth volume of Setton’s History, with the chapters on Syria-Palestine, Cyprus, Rhodes, and mainland Greece, appeared with some revisions only in 1977, almost three decades after their conception.
At about the same time appeared a monograph which remains to this day the standard book of reference on Gothic churches in Greece. Beata Kitsiki-Panagopoulos’s study was largely based on Bon, Gerola, and Enlart for the Peloponnese, Crete, and Cyprus respectively, focusing on the Cistercian and Mendicant monasteries and offering a concise overview of the material.39 The following decades witnessed the partial excavation of the church of St Sophia at Andravida and Peter Lock’s pioneering studies on the castles and fortified towers of Frankish Greece.40 More recently the monastery at Zaraka in the Peloponnese has been the focus of an in-depth archaeological investigation.41
On Cyprus, in the meantime, a lot had changed since Jeffery’s days. The new independent state established on the island in 1960 was struggling to build its cultural identity, an undertaking fraught with complex difficulties in view of the antagonism between the island’s two main ethnic and religious communities. This situation is partly reflected in the work of the Department of Antiquities. A strong focus on pre-Classical and Byzantine archaeology is both obvious and understandable after 1960. This is not to say that the Gothic monuments were neglected; on the contrary, work initiated earlier under A. H. S. Megaw was being pursued. But now there seemed to be more competition for both attention and, crucially, funds. Megaw himself started excavating in the late 1960s the site known as Saranda Kolones at Paphos, where the remains of a substantial Crusader castle were identified.42 In 1969 the Department invited UNESCO experts to investigate the structural condition of the major Gothic monuments and to present plans for their preservation.43 This work was interrupted by the events of 1974. Indeed, politics had been interfering with the Department’s work since the first years after Independence.44 But 1974 marked a major turning point and imposed a situation which obtains to the present day: following the military confrontation on the island, the Department of Antiquities had no access to monuments in the northern sector. The new authorities established there, although eager to do their best to preserve these structures, which are not merely tourist attractions but very often living places of worship, lack both the resources and access to archival material for information on work carried out in the past.45 It comes as no surprise then that the 1970s and most of the’80s did not witness much activity, either on the ground or in terms of scholarship.
The late 1980s and’90s on the other hand saw a slow resurgence of interest in the Lusignan period from both within and outside the island. New editions of important sources appeared, an English translation of Enlart made his work accessible once again, and several symposia and exhibitions were organized. Their focus was on cultural, social, ecclesiastical, and economic history, on the sources, manuscripts, icons, and frescoes. Indeed, in these fields great progress was being made, especially as far as painting is concerned, in particular by Doula Mouriki, Annemarie Weyl Carr, and Jaroslav Folda.46 Architecture figured at best on the sidelines, largely as a result of the political situation which hindered further study of the main monuments. An overview of Gothic architecture, published by Monique Rivoire-Richard in 1996, is largely descriptive and offers very little in terms of interpretation of the material.47 A few studies published by Nicola Coldstream, although extremely helpful and novel in their approach, cannot compensate for this lack.48
It was only more recently that steps were taken to redress the situation. A small number of excavations put Cyprus on the map of medieval archaeology: two urban sites are currently being investigated in Nicosia as a result of rescue excavations necessitated by the construction of public buildings, while archaeological surveys nowadays pay much more attention to medieval material than in the past.
Perspectives and Future Directions
There are several reasons behind the relative neglect of Gothic art in both Greece and Cyprus. One has to do with its Kunstlandschaft which remains notoriously difficult to determine, should one wish to do so. More than a century ago, Enlart had presented this art primarily as part of French Gothic. Others, as we saw earlier, viewed it as part of the art of the Crusaders, ultimately emanating again from France and stretching from the Holy Land in the east to mainland Greece in the west over a long period extending to the Ottoman conquest of Rhodes and Cyprus in the sixteenth century. Even in this context, however, this art remained secondary to that of Syria-Palestine. In addition, when along the way the strong French connection was challenged in favor of a more nuanced assessment which laid emphasis on the variety of sources of inspiration and influence, its inherent complexities with the resulting difficulties of approach were revealed.
A more significant factor affecting the study of Gothic in these lands is related to its place within the wider field of medieval art. To put it bluntly, is there any reason why a historian of medieval art outside of this region should bother to look at it? Textbooks of Gothic art and architecture barely contain a footnote about Cyprus, let alone Greece. Paul Frankl in his influential Gothic Architecture, written in the 1950s, states that only buildings which affected the evolution of style are considered in his book. Not surprisingly, there is hardly a word about Crusader architecture.49 Enlart’s legacy was in this respect short-lived. A new approach was signaled by Nicola Coldstream’s Medieval Architecture.50 Here, for the first time, Cyprus is put on the same footing as other peripheral regions of Western architecture and is often mentioned, mostly in relation to the expansion of medieval European architecture outside of Western Europe. This seems indeed to be the main interest of the Gothic of Cyprus and Greece from a Western perspective.
Our material offers little or no information on the organization of building campaigns, on church decoration and furnishings which have long disappeared, and rather little on patronage too.51 Its importance lies rather in issues such as the logistics of transplantation, the process of selection of models, and the economics of realization of these monuments, to the extent that these can be traced. The unavoidable conclusion then is that the art whose study is discussed here is of importance primarily from a local point of view, within the context of medieval art in former Byzantine lands. Yet even this is still largely ignored. Although in Greece the problems witnessed on Cyprus with its ethnic division are absent, scholarship has remained reluctant to view it as part of the country’s heritage, which, admittedly, is immensely richer for other historical periods.
The future of the field is difficult to predict. Nevertheless, some very recent developments on Cyprus allow for considerable optimism. The political deadlock on the island seems to be inexorably moving toward its resolution. Monuments and sites of archaeological significance in the north will eventually become accessible to scholars from both the other side of the island and from outside. And current scholarship shows that there is no lack of archaeologists and art historians willing to delve into their study.
One of the most original recent contributions comes from a scholar based in the north of the island. Alpay Özdural studied in detail the proportions and structure of St George of the Latins in Famagusta, Enlart’s favourite church on the island, in order to identify the measuring module used in its construction.52 Such investigations may help trace the origin of master masons and point toward a possible direction for future research. Other strands are provided by the work of Jean-Bernard de Vaivre. His original research on some of the lesser-known monuments of military architecture and on sculptural decoration indicate that there are several issues left unexplored by Enlart which merit further investigation with potentially rewarding results.53 The same author, with a team of French scholars under Jean Richard, is preparing a new edition of Enlart’s original text and illustrations, augmented with the addition of a study incorporating the results of subsequent scholarship. Still, despite these recent advances much remains to be done. Museums need catalogues, the material requires corpora and photographic surveys, ideally along the lines of Denys Pringle’s excellent work on the Holy Land.
Famagusta, with its walls and often well-preserved but ill-dated churches and other structures, provides an ideal example of a medieval city to be studied as a whole, placing its buildings and their decoration within the evolution of its urban fabric and its economic fortunes. The post-medieval building phases of the cathedrals in Nicosia and Famagusta, repaired and altered in the Venetian and Ottoman periods, remain to be disentangled. The obscure chronology of other important buildings such as the Bedestan in Nicosia and St George of the Greeks in Famagusta (fig. 24-3) could do with some help from limited excavations.
A major problem in the evolution of Gothic architecture on Cyprus still remains to be fully understood: this is the change in style which occurred in c.1300. At about the same period a new type of iconography was introduced for the kingdom’s coinage, replacing the previous, Byzantine-style coins. The possibility of links between these changes and political events needs to be further investigated. For it is at that time that the kings of Cyprus acquired the crown of Jerusalem (1268), while the last Crusader strongholds on the Syrian coast were disappearing one after the other. And it is at Acre that a new style of manuscript illumination also appeared, shortly before the city’s fall in 1291. The role of refugees from Acre in developments on Cyprus remains as intriguing as it is unexplored.54
FIGURE 24-3 St George of the Greeks, Famagusta. Reproduced courtesy of The Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Photo: C. J. P. Cave.
As mentioned above, one of the most exciting aspects of the art imported in former Byzantine lands is that of its models and its interaction with local traditions. A comparison between the artistic production of various regions (in particular the Morea and Cyprus) and with other areas where a similar process took place could open new perspectives. The kingdom of Jerusalem and Norman Sicily come to mind, although the outcome there was very different. Yet, tracing the analogies between the art promoted by the Hautevilles, the Villehardouins, the Lusignans, and the kings of Jerusalem – an extremely complex task – could shed light on the fascinating processes of adoption and adaptation within local parameters unique to each area.
| ABSA | Annual Bulletin of the British School at Athens |
| ARDA | Annual Report of the Director of Antiquities (Nicosia) |
| CCEC | Cahiers du centre d’études chypriotes (Paris) |
| CRAI | Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. Comptes-rendus des séances |
| JRIBA | Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects |
| KΣ |  (Nicosia) |
| RDAC | Reports of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus |
1 [On the art and architecture of the other Crusader States, see chapter 23 by Folda in this volume (ed.).]
2 [On Gothic architecture and French Gothic manuscript illumination, see chapters 18 and 20 by Murray and Hedeman, respectively, in this volume (ed.).]
3 Jeffery, “The refectory of Bella Paise Abbey.”
4 Grivaud, “Nicosie remodelée.”
5 Severis, Travelling Artists.
6 Mas Latrie, L’Histoire de l’île de Chypre; see also Papadopoullos, “Le Développement des études chypriotes.”
7 De Vogüé, Les Eglises de la Terre-Sainte.
8 Bonato, “Melchior de Vogüé.”
9 Severis and Bonato, Along the Most Beautiful Path. Only his now lost drawings of Bellapais had been published earlier, by Camille Enlart, who acquired them from de Vogüé: see Bonato, “Chypre dans les archives,” pp. 210–11.
10 Rey, Etudes, pp. 229–52.
11 L’Anson and Vacher, “Mediæval and other buildings”; see also Severis, Travelling Artists, pp. 182–3. Many more unpublished drawings and photographs are preserved in the Drawing Collection of the RIBA.
12 Mas Latrie, “Notice d’un voyage,” and L’Ile de Chypre, pp. 340–401.
13 Chamberlayne, Lacrimae Nicossienses.
14 Diehl, “Les monuments de l’Orient Latin.”
15 On Enlart’s career and pivotal role in the study of Crusader art, see Folda, The Art of the Crusaders, pp. 10–11, and Coldstream, “Camille Enlart.”
16 Enlart, L’Art gothique.
17 “When architects trained by French Gothic masters got the opportunity to build on Greek soil, they more or less produced the poorest possible specimens of their art”: Enlart, “Quelques monuments,” p. 309.
18 Enlart, “Fouilles dans les églises,” and “L’Ancien Monastère.”
19 Enlart, Le Musée de Sculpture, p. 147. Later on, casts of Gothic sculpture from Cyprus were added.
20 Enlart, Villes mortes, pp. 131–62.
21 Most of his negatives are now held at the Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine in Paris.
22 Many more were taken by Enlart but remain unpublished.
23 Discussion of this issue, with bibliography, in Papacostas, Byzantine Cyprus, vol. 1, pp. 145–6.
24 Coldstream, “Camille Enlart,” p. 6.
25 Les Pierres de France. Organe de la société pour le respect et la protection des anciens monuments français, published between 1937 and 1953.
26 Folda, The Art of the Crusaders, pp. 11–12.
27 Carlier, “Les villes françaises de Chypre.”
28 Bibliography in Cobham, An Attempt, pp. 28–9.
29 Jeffery, A Description.
30 Constable, “Historiography of the Crusades.”
31 Relevant reports in RDAC 1936 (published in 1939) and 1937–9 (published in 1951); du Plat Taylor, “A Thirteenth-Century Church.”
32 Roueché, “Prehistory,” in Herrin et al., eds., Mosaic. Festschrift. A list of Megaw’s publications appears in the same volume (pp. 181–3).
33 Gerola, I monumenti veneti.
34 Traquair, “Laconia I”; “Mediaeval fortresses”; and “Frankish Architecture.”
35 Bon, Le Péloponnèse byzantin.
36 Bon, La Morée franque, pp. 532–688.
37 Boase, “The Arts in Cyprus” and “The Arts in Frankish Greece and Rhodes.”
38 Soteriou, 
Talbot Rice, Icons of Cyprus.
39 Kitsiki-Panagopoulos, Cistercian and Mendicant Monasteries. [On Cistercian architecture in the West, see chapter 27 by Fergusson in this volume (ed.).]
40 For Andravida, see the relevant articles in Lock and Sanders, Archaeology of Medieval Greece. For Lock’s publications see bibliography.
41 Campbell, “Cistercian Monastery of Zaraka.”
42 Megaw, “A Castle in Cyprus,” pp. 42–51, with earlier bibliography.
43 ARDA 1969, p. 3; 1970, p. 9; 1971, p. 9; 1973, p. 13; 1974, p. 14.
44 For example, repairs to the cathedral of St Nicholas in Famagusta, which had started in 1951, were interrupted several times over the following decades: ARDA 1951, p. 12; 1958, p. 4; 1963, p. 9; 1964, p. 3; 1968 pp. 3 & 9; 1969, p. 9; 1970, p. 11; 1971, p. 11; 1972, p. 12.
45 It should be noted, however, that some restoration work was carried out at St Catherine’s in Nicosia and Ss Peter & Paul in Famagusta, both used now for cultural activities.
46 Folda, “Crusader Art”; Weyl Carr, “Correlative Spaces”; Edbury, “The State of Research.”
47 Rivoire-Richard, 
48 Coldstream, “The Church of St. George,” “Camille Enlart,” Nicosia.
49 Frankl, Gothic Architecture.
50 Coldstream, Medieval Architecture.
51 [On patronage, see chapter 9 by Caskey in this volume (ed.).]
52 Özdural, “The Church of St George of the Latins.”
53 See bibliography.
54 On these issues, see Folda, “Crusader Art,” pp. 212–15; Weyl Carr, “Images of medieval Cyprus,” pp. 99–100.
Justine M. Andrews, “Santa Sophia in Nicosia: the Sculpture of the Western Portals and its Reception,” Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 39 (1999), pp. 63–80.
Edward l’Anson and Sydney Vacher, “Mediæval and Other Buildings in the Island of Cyprus,” Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects (1882–3), pp. 13–32.
Thomas S. R. Boase, “The Arts in Cyprus: Ecclesiastical Art” and “The Arts in Frankish Greece and Rhodes,” in Kenneth M. Setton, ed., A History of the Crusades, vol. 4: The Art and Architecture of the Crusader States, ed., Harry W. Hazard (Madison, 1977), pp. 165–95, 208–50.
Antoine Bon, La Morée franque. Recherches historiques, topographiques et archéologiques sur la Principauté d’Achaie, 2 vols. (Paris, 1969).
——, Le Péloponnèse byzantin jusqu’en 1204 (Paris, 1951).
Lucie Bonato, “Chypre dans les archives de Melchior de Vogüé V. Fragment d’un carnet de voyage d’Edmond Duthoit (mission de 1865),” CCEC 31 (2001), pp. 209–50.
——, “Melchior de Vogüé et alii and Cyprus,” in Veronica Tatton-Brown, ed., Cyprus in the 19th century AD. Fact, Fancy and Fiction. Papers of the 22nd British Museum Classical Colloquium, December 1998 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 189–97.
Lucie Bonato and Maryse Emery, “L’Architecture rayonnante à Chypre: la cathédrale Saint-Nicolas de Famagouste,” CCEC 29 (1999), pp. 97–116.
Charalambos Bouras, “The Impact of Frankish Architecture on Thirteenth-Century Byzantine Architecture,” in Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh, eds., The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World (Washington, DC, 2001), pp. 247–62.
Sheila D. Campbell, “The Cistercian Monastery of Zaraka,” Echos du monde classique / Classical Views 41/16 (1997), pp 177–96.
Achille Carlier, “Les Villes françaises de Chypre,” Urbanisme 23 (1934), pp. 29–45, and 24 (1934), pp. 79–91.
J. Tankerville Chamberlayne, Lacrimae Nicossienses. Recueil des inscriptions funéraires, la plupart françaises, existant encore dans l’île de Chypre (Paris, 1894).
Jacques Charles-Gaffiot, ed., La France aux portes de l’Orient. Chypre XIIème–XVème siècle (Paris, 1991).
Claude Delaval Cobham, An Attempt at a Bibliography of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1929).
Nicola Coldstream, “Camille Enlart and the Gothic Architecture of Cyprus,” in David Hunt, ed., Camille Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus (London, 1987), pp. 1–10.
——, “The Church of St. George the Latin, Famagusta,” RDAC (1975), pp. 147–51.
——, Medieval Architecture, Oxford History of Art (Oxford, 2002).
——, Nicosia: Gothic City to Venetian Fortress (Nicosia, 1993).
Giles Constable, “The Historiography of the Crusades,” in Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh, eds., The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim world (Washington, DC, 2001), pp. 1–22.
Charles Diehl, “Les Monuments de l’Orient Latin,” Revue de l’Orient Latin 5 (1897), pp. 293–310.
Peter Edbury, “The State of Research: Cyprus Under the Lusignans and Venetians, 1991–1998,” Journal of Medieval History 25 (1999), pp. 57–65.
Camille Enlart, “L’Ancien Monastère des franciscains à Nicosie de Chypre,” Florilegium Recueil de travaux d’érudition dédiés à Monsieur le marquis Melchior de Vogüé à l’occasion du quatre-vingtième anniversaire de sa naissance (Paris, 1909), pp. 215–29.
——, L’Art gothique et la renaissance en Chypre, 2 vols. (Paris, 1899); translated as Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, ed. David Hunt (London, 1987).
——, “Fouilles dans les églises de Famagouste de Chypre,” Archaeological Journal 62 (1905), pp. 195–217.
——, Le Musée de Sculpture comparée du Trocadéro (Paris, 1911).
——, “Quelques monuments d’architecture gothique en Grèce,” Revue de l’Art Chrétien 8 (1897), pp. 309–14.
——, Villes mortes du moyen-âge (Paris, 1920).
Jaroslav Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187 (Cambridge, 1995).
——, “Art in the Latin East, 1098–1291,” in Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford, 1995), pp. 141–59.
——, “Crusader Art in the Kingdom of Cyprus, 1275–1291. Reflections on the State of the Question,” in Nicholas Coureas and Jonathan Riley–Smith, eds., Cyprus and the Crusades. Papers Given at the International Conference “Cyprus and the Crusades,” Nicosia, 6–9 September, 1994 (Nicosia, 1995), pp. 209–37.
Paul Frankl, Gothic Architecture (Harmondsworth, 1962; revised by Paul Crossley, Yale University Press, 2002).
Giovanni Gerola, I Monumenti veneti nell’isola di Creta, 4 vols. (Venice, 1905–17).
Gilles Grivaud, “Nicosie remodelée (1567). Contribution à la topographie de la ville médiévale,” 
19 (1992), pp. 281–306.
Paul Hetherington, “The ‘Larnaca Tympanum’ and its Origins: A Persisting Problem From 19th-Century Cyprus,” RDAC (2000), pp. 361–78.
Brunehilde Imhaus, “Un Monastère féminin de Nicosie: Notre-Dame de Tortose,” in Michel Balard, Benjamin Z. Kedar and Jonathan Riley-Smith, eds., Dei gesta per Francos. Etudes sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 389–401.
——, “Tombeaux et fragments funéraires médiévaux de l’île de Chypre,” RDAC (1998), pp. 225–31.
George Jeffery, A Description of the Historic Monuments of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1918).
——, “The Refectory of Bella Paise Abbey, Cyprus,” JRIBA 22 (1915), pp. 181–5.
Beata Kitsiki-Panagopoulos, Cistercian and Mendicant Monasteries in Medieval Greece (Chicago and London, 1979).
Peter Lock, “Castles and Seigneural Influence in Latin Greece,” in Alan V. Murray, ed., From Clermont to Jerusalem. The Crusades and Crusader Societies 1095–1500 (Turnhout,
1998), pp. 173–85.
——, The Franks in the Aegean, 1204–1500 (London and New York, 1995).
Peter Lock and Guy D. R. Sanders, The Archaeology of Medieval Greece, Oxbow Monograph 59 (Oxford, 1996).
Louis de Mas Latrie, “Notice d’un voyage archéologique en Orient,” Bibliothèque de l’école des Chartes 7 (1845–46), pp. 489–544.
——, L’Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan, 3 vols. (Paris, 1852–61).
——, L’île de Chypre, sa situation présente et ses souvenirs du Moyen Age (Paris, 1879).
Arthur H. S. Megaw, “A Castle in Cyprus Attributable to the Hospital?,” in Malcolm Barber, The Military Orders. Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick (Aldershot, 1994), pp. 42–51, with earlier bibliography.
Catherine Otten-Froux, “Notes sur quelques monuments de Famagouste à la fin du moyen-âge,” in Judith Herrin, Margaret Mullett and Catherine Otten-Froux, eds., Mosaic. Festschrift for A. H. S. Megaw, British School at Athens Studies 8 (London, 2001), pp. 145–54.
Alpay Özdural, “The Church of St George of the Latins in Famagusta: A Case Study on Medieval Metrology and Design Techniques,” in N.Y. Wu, ed., Ad Quadratum. The Practical Application of Geometry in Medieval Architecture (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 217–42.
Tassos Papacostas, “Byzantine Cyprus: The Testimony of its Churches, 650–1200,” 3 vols. (D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford, 1999).
Theodore Papadopoullos, “Le Développement des études chypriotes comme branche internationale des sciences historico–philologiques,” Chypre: La Vie quotidienne de l’antiquité à nos jours. Actes du colloque, Musée de l’Homme (Paris, 1985), pp. 135–8.
Athanasios Papageorgiou, “Crusader Influence on Byzantine Art in Cyprus,” in Nicholas Coureas and Jonathan Riley-Smith, eds., Cyprus and the Crusades. Papers Given at the International Conference “Cyprus and the Crusades”, Nicosia 6–9 September 1994 (Nicosia, 1995), pp. 275–94.
Gianni Perbellini, “Le Fortificazioni del regno di Cipro nello stato veneto (X–XVI sec.),” KΣ 50 (1986), pp. 193–225.
Joan du Plat Taylor, “A Thirteenth-Century Church at Nicosia, Cyprus,” Antiquity (December 1932), pp. 469–71.
Denys Pringle, “Architecture in the Latin East, 1098–1571,” in Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford, 1995), pp. 160–83.
Emmanuel-Guillaume Rey, Etudes sur les monuments de l’architecture militaire des Croisés en Syrie et dans l’île de Chypre (Paris, 1871).
Monique Rivoire-Richard, 
in T. Papadopoullos, ed., 
5.2 (Nicosia, 1996), pp. 1415–54.
Charlotte Roueché, “The Prehistory of the Cyprus Department of Antiquities,” in Judith Herrin, Margaret Mullett, and Catherine Otten–Froux, eds., Mosaic. Festschrift for A. H. S. Megaw, British School at Athens Studies 8 (London, 2001), pp. 155–66.
Chris Schabel, “O Camille Enlart 
RDAC (2003), pp. 401–6.
Rita Severis, “Edmond Duthoit: An Artist and Ethnographer in Cyprus, 1862, 1865,” in Veronica Tatton–Brown, ed., Cyprus in the 19th Century AD. Fact, Fancy and Fiction. Papers of the 22nd British Museum Classical Colloquium, December 1998 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 32–49.
——, Travelling Artists in Cyprus, 1700–1960 (London, 2000).
Rita Severis and Lucie Bonato, Along the Most Beautiful Path in the World. Edmond Duthoit and Cyprus (Nicosia, 1999).
Carl D. Sheppard, “Excavations at the Cathedral of Haghia Sophia, Andravida, Greece,” Gesta 25 (1986), pp. 139–44.
George Soteriou, 
(Athens, 1935).
David Talbot Rice, The Icons of Cyprus, Courtauld Institute Publications on Near Eastern Art 2 (London, 1937).
Ramsay Traquair, “Frankish Architecture in Greece,” JRIBA 31 (1923), pp. 33–50, 73–86.
——, “Laconia I. Mediaeval fortresses,” ABSA 12 (1906), pp. 259–76.
——, “Mediaeval Fortresses of the North-Western Peloponnesus,” ABSA 13 (1907), pp. 268–81.
Jean-Bernard de Vaivre, “Datation des campagnes de construction des édifices élevés par les Hospitaliers à Kolossi en Chypre,” CRAI (2000), pp. 249–58.
——, “Les Eglises jumelles de Famagouste,” Monuments et mémoires publiés par la Fondation Eugène Piot, 82 (2003), pp. 139–71.
——, “La Forteresse de Kolossi en Chypre,” Monuments et mémoires publiés par la Fondation Eugène Piot 79 (2000), pp. 73–155.
——, “Identifications hasardeuses et datation de monuments à Famagouste: le cas des ‘églises jumelles des Templiers et des Hospitaliers’,” CRAI (2002), pp. 45–55.
——, “Sculpteurs parisiens en Chypre autour de 1300,” in Michel Balard, Benjamin Z. Kedar and Jonathan Riley–Smith, eds., Dei gesta per Francos. Etudes sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 373–88.
——, “Sur les sites des châteaux disparus de Sigouri et de Gastria en Chypre,” CRAI (1998), pp. 1007–29.
——, “Le Tympan du portail central de la cathédrale Sainte-Sophie de Nicosie,” CRAI (2001), pp. 1031–42.
Melchior de Vogüé, Les Eglises de la Terre-Sainte (Paris, 1860), pp. 378–89.
Annemarie Weyl Carr, “Correlative Spaces: Art, Identity, and Appropriation in Lusignan Cyprus,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 14/15 (1998/9), pp. 59–80.
——, “Images of medieval Cyprus,” in Paul W. Wallace, ed., Visitors, Immigrants, and Invaders in Cyprus, Institute of Cypriot Studies, University at Albany, State University of New York (New York, 1995), pp. 87–103.
Michael D. Willis, “The Larnaca Tympanum,” KΣ 45 (1981), pp. 15–28.
Netice Yildiz and Cengiz Y. Toklu, “Assessment of the Gothic Monuments in North Cyprus for Conservation and Restoration Purposes,” Advances in Civil Engineering, 4th International Congress, 1–3 November 2000 (Famagusta, 2000), vol. 1, pp. 185–95.