{"id":15266,"date":"2022-02-14T11:02:34","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T11:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/religiousroutes.eu\/?post_type=route&p=15266"},"modified":"2022-02-14T11:04:44","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T11:04:44","slug":"school-of-nw-greece","status":"publish","type":"route","link":"https:\/\/religiousroutes.eu\/en\/route\/school-of-nw-greece\/","title":{"rendered":"School of NW Greece"},"content":{"rendered":"

The School of NW Greece or Local Continental School or School of Thebes, from the place of origin of its three famous painters, Frangos Katelanos and the brothers Frangos and Georgios Kontaris, is together with the Cretan School the two great schools of painting of the 16th century.
\nThe School creates its first masterpiece at the Monastery of the Philanthropists. That this happens in Ioannina is not accidental, since the former capital of the Despotate of Epirus had a tradition of art, social and economic status, favorable treatment by the conqueror, while members of prominent Giannioti families, during the 16th century, establish or renovate monasteries on the Island and in Meteora, entrusting their decoration to the painters of the Local Continental School.
\nThe Monastery of the Philanthropists is followed by a series of seventeen more well-known sets of frescoes in fourteen monasteries and temples until the end of the 16th century. In Epirus there are eight (Monasteries of the Philanthropists, Dilios and Eleousa on the Island, temples of Agios Nikolaos in Krapsi, Agios Dimitrios and Metamorphosis in Klimatia), ten in Aetolia (Monastery of Myrtia), in Thessaly (Monastery of Varlaam in Meteora) church of Rasiotissa in Kastoria, Monasteries of Megisti Lavra on Mount Athos and Zavorda in Grevena), Evia (church of Paleopanagia in Steni, Monastery of Galataki in Limni) and Boeotia (Monastery of Saint Meletios). The scattering of the decorations, apart from Epirus, in an extensive area of \u200b\u200bcentral and northern Greece is remarkable, while the geographical extent of the works proves on the one hand the prestige of the School and its representatives and on the other interprets the wide spread of its ideas. to the Peloponnese and the Balkans, and in fact in the following, already formed in the late 16th c. generations of painters.
\nOf the eighteen decorations in total, the twelve are exactly dated with inscriptions from 1539, in the Monastery of Myrtia, to 1592\/93 or 1595\/96, frescoes of the dome in the Monastery of Zavorda and give valuable information about the patrons and accomplices and some for the duration of the work. However, only four, also in the second half of the 16th century, cite the name of the painter: of the Theban Frangos Katellanos in the chapel of Agios Nikolaos in the katholikon of the Lavra Monastery in 1560, of the Thebans, also brothers Georgios and Frangos Kontaris Agios Nikolaos Krapsis in 1563 and in the simple in the catholic of the Monastery of Barlaam in 1566 and only of Frangos in the Transfiguration of Klimatia in 1568, while the other artists remain anonymous.
\nThe three renowned Theban painters, and especially Frangos Katelanos, gave the School a remarkable presence and extent, to the point that it was, in the 16th century, the most important painting movement in mainland Greece against the Cretan School. They probably came to Epirus as established painters, who were assigned a specific task and acclimatized, adapting their art to the local data and offering new elements, which strengthened and expanded the local painting.<\/p>\n