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Athos Holy Mount

Wood-Carving

The Original New Testament

As regards both quantity and quality, Mount Athos is the richest area in the whole of Greece in terms of its perfect distillation of monuments of Orthodox Christian art from the eleventh to the twentieth century. Needless to say, wood-carving is also represented here: indeed, from the early seventeenth century onwards, a large number of works survive in which one may trace, step by step, the whole evolution of wood-carving on Athos in the post-Byzantine period. However, since these works have never been systematically catalogued, and specialised studies are few and far between, any attempt at a comprehensive presentation of the wood-carving of this period is still something of a pioneering endeavour. Furthermore, little survives from the period before the seventeenth century, either on Mount Athos or anywhere else in Greece, so it is not easy to trace the changing forms or sketch out even the general characteristics of each period with any degree of certainty.

In recent years, researchers have ascribed four previously unknown Palaeologan works to the Byzantine period, from which very little survives and every new find constitutes a rare and precious record. They are the epistyle of an iconostasis, two lecterns, and a double door. The epistyle is in the south-west Chapel of St Demetrios in the old katholikon of Xenophontos Monastery, and is decorated with half-palmette tendrils in low-relief. The lecterns are of a very high standard: probably connected with the Despot of Thessaloniki, Andronicos Palaeologos, they are among the rarest treasures in Vatopedi Monastery (see the relevant entry below). The double door, finally, which leads from the inner narthex to the nave of the katholikon of Dionysiou Monastery, is a work of outstanding craftsmanship, comprising rectangular panels with frames and ornamented with large and small bosses, animals, flowers, interlacing scrolls, tendrils, and other decorative motifs. These works confirm earlier observations about the relationship between Byzantine wood-carving and marble sculpture, minor art, and painting, and, like other Palaeologan wood-carvings, testify to the use of colour.

From the period that followed, between the Fall of Constantinople and about 1600, the surviving wood-carvings on Mount Athos are mainly parts of epistyles, together with some large crosses from sixteenth-century iconostases: the cross and two pieces of the epistyle from Dionysiou Monastery, for instance, the sections of epistyles with Dodekaorton icons from Iviron and Pantokrator, and the cross from the Great Lavra Monastery.

It should be mentioned here that the sections of the epistyle and the cross from Dionysiou Monastery, with their fairly high relief and their thematic repertory of slanting acanthus leaves and tangential semicircles enclosing half-palmettes, as also the carved sections of the epistyles of Iviron and Pantokrator, and the Great Lavra cross, were produced by workshops from Crete, where both wood-carving and painting were flourishing at this time and continued to do so well into the seventeenth century. This was why Mount Athos, which used Cretan painters, also called on Cretan craftsmen for wood-carving, particularly for iconostases. However, the Athonites did not content themselves solely with Cretan wood-carvers, nor Cretan painters for that matter, but they also commissioned work to artists from mainland Greece. This is confirmed by a sixteenth-century bema door from the Monastery of St Paul, the technical features of which closely relate it to the iconostasis in the Church of St Nicholas at Velvendo, Kozani (precisely dated to 1591), the almost contemporary iconostases in the Church of the Panagia at Kastraki, Kalambaka, and the Church of the Panagia at Aiani, Kozani, as also the bema door in Kastoria Museum. These iconostases are worked in low relief and still retain their affinity with marble sculpture, whereas in Cretan wood-carving of the same period the relief is high and reflects Venetian influence.

At this point it must be noted that the evolution of wood-carving in the post-Byzantine period was directly connected with the replacement of the marble templon by wooden iconostasis. The change, which must have begun at least as early as the fourteenth century, spread more widely during the Ottoman period, when the iconostasis became the principal expression of religious wood-carving. At this time, the iconostasis preserved the structure of the high Byzantine templon, with the closure panels below, the despotic icons higher up, and the epistyle along the top, though this latter feature was now high, with an entablature in several horizontal sections.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, wood-carving on Mount Athos had moved away from marble sculpture and was exploiting the technical potentialities of wood in order to develop its own distinctive style. A document of 1623, concerning the commissioning of an iconostasis by Iviron Monastery from a Cretan wood-carver named Thomas Benettos, shows that contact with Crete continued in this century too. The western motifs and relatively high relief must have been due to these Cretan connections, being elements which the Cretans took from the west, adapted to their own aesthetic, and passed on to Mount Athos. Athos was also receiving oriental elements, and proceeded discreetly to integrate everything into the traditional Byzantine forms, preserving an uninterrupted continuity of style and the profounder Orthodox spiritual content.

The oldest and most important piece of seventeenth-century wood-carving on Mount Athos is the iconostasis in the Protaton. Made in 1611 by a monk named Neophytos (see the relevant entry), it was a landmark in the evolution of the post-Byzantine Athonite iconostasis. The epistyle is still dominated by its zone of icons, but this is supplemented by five relatively wide and twelve narrow relief zones, preparing the way for the high entablature. Alongside the traditional forms, it also uses a Renaissance vocabulary, together with low relief; though in some areas the relief is in fact relatively high and in a few it is fretted. Everywhere, however, a faultless technique blends old knowledge and new forms into a harmonious synthesis. The other seventeenth-century iconostases on Mount Athos are also noteworthy –Esome of them, indeed, are very importantE– and in them (in the Great Lavra, Vatopedi, Chelandari, Xenophontos, Pantokrator, Philotheou, Molyvokklissia, and cells in Karyes) one may clearly trace the development of Athonite wood-carving.

The Protaton screen is the structural model of all the seventeenth-century Athonite iconostases, with the exception of those in the small churches, whose epistyles necessarily have fewer sections. As a rule, the icons have arched frames, though some are topped with tiny conchas, and the tympanum over the Royal Door is frequently done in fretwork. The decorative subjects include fruit, flowers, leafy tendrils, birds, palmettes, and vases, though the commonest theme, which is seen in one or more sections of the epistyles of all the screens, is the vine-shoot, sometimes simple, and sometimes – as in the Great Lavra – more complex, with broad leaves between the branches, and bunches of grapes, often with birds pecking at them. The outline of the leaves in particular is frequently more deeply cut away, so that they stand out more forcefully against the background, which presents a chromatic contrast to the gilded relief ornaments. The relief in various places is sometimes low, sometimes higher, and some of the decorative motifs – like the vine-leaves – are usually rendered in a naturalistic manner, while others – like the palmettes and fruit – preserve their traditional stylised forms. The great cross on top of the sixteenth-century iconostases continued to be used in the seventeenth century, its height in some cases reaching four metres.

Many iconostases were made on Mount Athos in the eighteenth century, some to replace older ones and others to adorn the interiors of the new churches that were being built at this time. After 1700, the general economic climate improved considerably, which meant that numerous churches were being built and furnished both on Athos and in the rest of Greece. At the same time, changes were taking place in the structure, technique, and style of the iconostases. The triple arrangement remained, but new elements were being added. In the lower zone, above the closure panels, narrow rectangular carved wooden features, the lower ketabedes or 'overpanels', were added. In the middle zone, above the despotic icons, the upper ketabedes were added, surmounted by curved structures known as kemeria. The third zone, corresponding to the Byzantine epistyle, is often quite wide and includes the Tree of Jesse, the Apostolika, the Dodekaorton, and narrower relief zones; it is crowned by the low, perforated kladi, upon which, as of old, is the cross flanked by the lypira. The capitals on the colonnettes in the zone containing the despotic icons are usually shaped into corbels supporting the epistyle, which projects and cants forwards. This, give or take a few details, is the structure of all iconostases from the eighteenth century onwards.

As far as technique is concerned, by the beginning of the eighteenth century the relief was becoming higher, and more and more parts of the screen were being 'carved in the air' (fretwork). At the same time, the stylised forms were giving way to a more naturalistic rendering, and there was a growing tendency towards prolific, elaborate decoration. The motifs were many and varied: tendrils twisting and twining, flowers, leaves, fruit, stylised carnations, vases, garlands, mouldings, birds, animals, angels, human figures – motifs from the Byzantine tradition, some of them influenced by the Renaissance, others with elements of European and oriental Baroque. One popular new motif was a medallion serving as a cartouche, a common ornament in European decoration after the early decades of the eighteenth century.

In the first half of the eighteenth century, craftsmen were also engaged in a search for ever higher relief, more prolific, elaborate compositions, and more naturalistic forms. The early iconostases – in the Chapel of St John the Prodrome in Iviron Monastery, for instance (1711), and the Chapel of St John the Prodrome in the kellion of Dionysios of Fournas (1711) – preserve a number of seventeenth-century features. In the Chapel of St Demetrios in Vatopedi Monastery (post-1721), the rosettes have become roses and there are many more animals; while in the katholikon of Stavronikita (1743) the screen carvings verge on Greek folk Baroque.

The period between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century was the age of modern Greek Baroque, which was strongly manifested in ecclesiastical wood-carving, and is represented on Mount Athos by numerous, frequently very fine, examples. Particularly impressive are the iconostases in the katholika, especially those of Vatopedi, Gregoriou, Docheiariou, Koutloumousiou, Dionysiou, and Esphigmenou.

During this period, the iconostases changed in terms of structure, technique, and artistic style. Each one now formed an impenetrable barrier between the nave and the sanctuary, rising to the tops of the walls and leaning forward. Frequently, they were not straight, but curved at the ends, or else the middle section advanced towards the centre of the nave; and the epistyle, now transformed into a weighty entablature, consisted of a succession of undulating courses.

Fretwork predominated and the relief was high, almost sculpturesque. Forms tended to be elliptical, the arrangement diagonal, the whole surface was gilded, there was a strong impression of depth, and the thematic repertory was enriched with fresh motifs and new combinations of old ones. Elaborately twining tendrils thick with leaves covered the surfaces, and among the restless foliage appeared flowers, animals, birds, angels, prophets, Evangelists, scenes from the Old and New Testaments, little human figures engaged in everyday pursuits, and a host of other decorative subjects –Evases, bouquets, fillets, fringes, medallionsE– all in busy motion, often twisting and twining, and rendered as naturalistically as their tiny size permitted.

After the mid-ninetenth century, influenced, like other art forms, by Neoclassicism, ecclesiastical wood-carving began to introduce elements that were ill-suited to its style, and suffered a decline in quality as a result. It has correctly been observed that the works became poorer and somewhat cold and flat. Iconostases in particular displayed a mixture of techniques, being now panelled, with only a few sections still carved – usually the tympanum over the Royal Door, the Royal Door itself, the cross and the lypira, and, more rarely, a band of fretwork on the epistyle. Sometimes the screens are painted, however, and then the vases, the vine-shoots, and the floral and geometrical ornaments are rendered with a sensitivity and feeling for colour that produce enchanting compositions imbued with the fresh purity of folk art.

Finally, it should be noted that the interior decoration of the churches also includes cathedras, ambos, and other objects carved in wood, such as icon-stands, lecterns, candelabra, and epitaphii. But the tour de force of ecclesiastical wood-carving is the iconostasis, which 'brings together all the virtues [of that art form], comprehends all its decorative themes, and fully exploits its aesthetic potential.' We have therefore confined this investigation to the iconostases, because this, albeit brief, survey of their technical and morphological development on Mount Athos, gives us a clear overview of Athonite wood-carving as a whole.

Nikos Nikonanos

Bibliography: Soteriou 1930, pp. 171-80. Corovic-Ljubinkovic 1965. Corovic-Ljubinkovic 1966, pp. 119-37. Makris 1969. Chatzidakis 1973, col. 374ff. Kazanaki-Lappa 1974, pp. 251-83. Kalokyris 1980, pp. 173-203. Tsaparlis 1980. Makris 1982. Koutelakis 1986. Kakavas 1994, pp. 183-95. Tsaparlis 1994, pp. 71-94. Papatheophanous-Tsouri 1995, pp. 83-106. Nikonanos 1996, pp. 536-46.

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Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athos/en/e218bh01.asp