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Kastoria Art, Patronage, and Society

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Kastoria Art, Patronage, and Society Kastoria Art, Patronage, and Society EUGENIA DRAKOPOULOU astoria’s historical development was dynamic Balkan city with noteworthy determined by its intelligently potential for growth in its economy, Kchosen location, its links to major education, social organization, and power roads, and its inhabitants’ diligence. Before structures. The image of a city that and after any approach to and interpretation flourished economically and intellectually in of this development, one of the city’s the eighteenth century primarily impresses impressive achievements is unquestionable: modern visitors to this densely settled center this small urban center of the Byzantine of 20,000 inhabitants as they encounter Empire, which may or may not have totaled early modern Kastoria’s imposing mansions three to four thousand residents in the of wealthy merchants and furriers’ fourteenth century, had amassed dozens of workshops. The processing of fur, which is churches decorated with artistically attested in the region from the fifteenth noteworthy frescos and portable icons. century and was largely responsible for the Furthermore, the city’s pious and worthy city’s flourishing economy in the eighteenth inhabitants took care that a wealth of century, continues to this day.4 inscriptions accompanied these works of The Byzantine city then emerges in the art, in which they included family names, same place with its small-scale plan, as offices, property, administrators, and churches, sections of walls, and towers church rulers. Today this admirable record unexpectedly appear beside old mansions of local artistic patronage1 dating back to and modern buildings. The area is the tenth century serves as a basic key to constricted, given that the urban fabric the reconstruction of the history of a small extended a mere 984 yards (900 m) east to Byzantine provincial city. west and 1,093 yards (1,000 m) north to Kastoria2 was built on the lake of the south. Within this space there are roughly same name in western Macedonia in the seventy churches5 dating from the ninth to Haliakmon River valley (figs. 34, 95); it the nineteenth centuries, almost fully was in direct communication with the integrated into the urban fabric (fig. 96). major Via Egnatia, the main artery linking Decorated with wall paintings, portable the West to Constantinople (fig. 19). The icons, and the Greek donors’ dedicatory Byzantine city’s characteristic features3 had inscriptions, they bear witness to the already been formed by the tenth century: spiritual and social life of Kastoria’s natural and built fortifications, a fertile residents.6 Around 400 portable icons hinterland—although one vulnerable to (some of them on display in this exhibition) hostile incursions, and exploitation of the dating from the twelfth to the nineteenth wealth of Lake Kastoria combined with a centuries, fragments of wall paintings, Early high living standard and the cultivation of Christian mosaics, and architectural Byzantine civilization in terms of its members from both Byzantine and customs, art, and the Greek language. Ottoman times are housed in the city’s With this solid foundation of urban Byzantine Museum, built in 1989 atop the structure and organization, Byzantine and hill of the Byzantine acropolis.7 later Turkish (from the late 14th century) Kastoria evolved up to the present into a Fig. 95 | Panoramic view of the city of Kastoria. | 114 | | 115 | N 34 36 22 24 37 25 31 21 23 1 1. Church of Hagioi Anargyroi 33 20 2. Church of Taxiarches Metropoleos 16 3. Church of Hagios Stephanos 12 LAKE 19 4. Koumbelidike 17 5. Church of Hagios Nikolaos tou Kasnitze 32 3 6. Church of Hagios Athanasios 11 15 26 7. Church of Hagios Nikolaos Mouzabike 27 10 13 8. Church of the Panagia Rassiotissa 28 9. Church of the Panagia Mouzabike 18 9 7 10. Church of Hagios Georgios Mouzabike 11. Church of Hagioi Apostoloi 12. Church of Hagios Nikolaos 38 14 4 8 13. Church of Hagios Demetrios 14. Church of Hagios Taxiarches Gymnasiou 15. Church of Hagios Nikolaos Magaleiou 16. Church of Panagia 17. Church of Hagios Nikolaos 5 18. Church of Hagios Nikolaos 19. Church of Hagios Andreas 20. Church of Hagios Nikolaos Kyritze 21. Church of Hagios Georgrios tou Vounou 29 30 22. Church of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple 2 23. Church of Hagios Nikolaos Tzotze 24. Church of Taxiarchai 35 25. Church of Phaneromene 26. Church of Hagios Georgios tes Politeias 6 27. Church of Panagia tou Oikonomou 28. Church of Hagios Alypios 29. Church of Hagios Nikolaos tou Dragota 30. Church of Hagios Nikolaos tou Karibe LAKE 31. Church of Prodromos Apozari 32. Goula Djami of the Citadel 33. Kursun Djami 34. Djami 35. Natzes Mansion 36. Tsiatsapas Mansion Fig. 96 | Topographical map of Kastoria with locations 37. Sapountzes Mansion of Byzantine monuments (after Pelekanides and 38. City walls Chatzidakes 1985). From this vantage point one enjoys a to supplement the city’s strong wall in the Justinian age,11 should make us cautious sweeping view of Kastoria and its lake. The defense of the city. The historian Prokopios about crediting the city’s fortification to city developed in the Byzantine period on a mentioned the walls of Kastoria in his Justinian’s imperial program.12 In any case, natural elevation some 246 feet (75 m) work De Aedificiis, in which he sings the it appears that medieval Kastoria developed above the lake. The ridge on which the city praises of the emperor Justinian’s (527–65) at the same site as the Roman city of was built started from a narrow strip of monumental building program in Europe, Celetron,13 and on the basis of the land, the isthmus, which was Kastoria’s Asia, and Africa as well as his rebuilding of archaeological finds the first coherent only connection with the mainland. It was more than one hundred cities.9 Prokopios picture of the well-developed Byzantine described with exceptional accuracy by the attributed the choice of Kastoria’s location urban center dates to the tenth century. twelfth-century Byzantine historian and and its fortifications to Justinian’s imperial During this period its walls defined the writer Anna Komnene, daughter of policy. The fact that Prokopios includes city’s outer limit, protecting it from enemies Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1083–1118): information about the building of walls in and separating it from the villages in the “there is a lake, the Lake of Kastoria, into Early Christian cities that does not agree fertile valley of the Haliakmon, from which which there obtrudes a strip of land from with modern archaeological finds,10 added to Kastoria’s residents obtained their produce. the mainland; at its tip it expands, ending the fact that more recent excavation in the The defensive requirements were of utmost in rocky mountains.” 8 By virtue of this city does not confirm with any degree of importance for the survival of this unique geographic location, the lake served certainty the dating of Kastoria’s walls to provincial urban center, which saw fighting | 116 | between Byzantines and Bulgarians (10th Kastoria’s numerous churches Hagios Stephanos,20 on the city’s eastern century), Normans (11th century), Serbs continue in operation today, with the side, this is most apparent. In its main (14th century), Albanians (14th century), exception of a few monuments which by floor, its narthex, and its galleries the and Ottomans (14th century).14 In the late virtue of their interesting architecture and greater part of its original painted fourteenth century, following the fall of unique wall paintings function primarily decoration is preserved, dominated by the other Byzantine cities in the Balkans, as museums. Most churches, both scene of the Second Coming, an Kastoria was taken by the Ottomans, Byzantine and Post-Byzantine, were built exceptionally important work of Middle under whose rule it remained until 1912, and decorated with private donations, as is Byzantine painting (10th century). The when it was incorporated into the confirmed by inscriptions and by the fact original paint layer was sporadically Kingdom of Greece during the first period that even now they continue to be known covered by wall paintings from various of the Royal Republic. Throughout its by the names of their founders. later periods, most of which are in the history, the most important element of the Some ten monuments survive from nature of occasional votive icons. A second city’s defenses and its demarcation from the Byzantine Kastoria’s earliest years, layer includes primarily scenes from the hinterland was the lakeside wall that closed beginning in the mid-ninth century Gospels dating to the late twelfth–early off its northwest side, the only one not following the age of Iconoclasm (the thirteenth centuries.21 Many votive images protected by the lake. From the Byzantine religious controversy, with political falling outside the iconographic program period we have testimony to a small-scale implications, over the worship of sacred cover various portions of the walls and the wall on the acropolis, site of the images) and down to the late tenth main-floor piers; these date to the administrative buildings, the cathedral century.17 Members of the local elite took thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth dedicated to the Virgin Mary as the city’s the initiative in building and decorating patron,15 the bishop’s palace, and these churches, in which they are presumably the residences of rulers and frequently depicted. Constantine administrators. In the seventeenth century (Konstantinos) is one of the first residents the chronicler and traveler Evliya Çelebi of Byzantine Kastoria to come to life, described a lovely fortress built with ashlar thanks to his portrait in the church of the masonry on the western side of a large lake Hagioi Anargyroi (fig.
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