Iconographical details of Western origin in some scenes of the Crucifixion from the end of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries

Abstract

The article discusses the presence of iconographical details of Western origin in the scene of Christ’s Crucifixion in the post-Byzantine period. It focuses on the role of works by painters from the Cretan and Epirote schools in their distribution among the next generation of icon-painters. From here a detailed examination of the compositions of the Crucifixion on three monuments in the territory of modern-day North Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, dated to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, is carried out. The comparison with monuments from the same period originating mainly in Greek territories leads to hypotheses regarding the painters’ provenance or the place of their education. A rare version of the scene from the second half of the seventeenth century from the territory of Bulgaria is also discussed.

Keywords

• crucifixion
• iconography
• cretan school
• epirote school
• painters’ workshops