Medival and Renaissance

THE IONIAN ISLANDS (Corfu, Paxos, Lefkada, Ithaka, Cephalonia, Zakynthos, Kythera)
are the only part of Hellenism, as well as of the Byzantine Empire, which was not essentially subject to Ottoman rule. Already from the fourteenth century, they were gradually incorporated in the Venetian Serenissima Republic following developments in Western Europe at all levels – political, economic, social and cultural. This fact set its seal on their status, poised between Byzantine tradition and Western European innovation, which shaped the Septinsular culture, while keeping alive the Greek national consciousness and the Orthodox Christian faith. A special chapter in the rich artistic output of the Ionian Islands are the icono - stases in the churches. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in particular, the majority of iconostases are wood-carved and gilded with baroque decoration. Nonetheless, on Corfu there is a large number of stone (or more rarely marble) built iconostases, in the logic of carved
stone façades (with the icons hung as paintings). Specifically, from the mid seventeenth century onwards a particular style is adopted, expressing the ‘osmosis’ between the Byzantine Orthodox tradition of the Ionian Islands and the artistic reality of Italy. In essence, a local idiom is created, which is encountered in most of the churches in town and countryside, and which we name conventionally ‘Corfiot-type iconostasis’. It is based on the usual typology of iconostases in zones, but with clear influence from the baroque architecture of building façades. The iconostases of
Corfiot type are distinguished into early, of austere aspect and spare line, such as the iconostasis in the Virgin Antivouniotissa in the town of Corfu, and later, with extravagant baroque ornamentation (vegetal motifs, garlands, scrolls, masks, etc.), such as in St Paraskevi at Varypatades (1714). The baroque iconostasis, of curved plan and exquisite art, recalling the architecture of Bernini and Borromini, in the Middle Byzantine church of Sts Jason and Sosipatros, constitutes the epitome of this osmosis, while the imposing marble iconostasis in St Antony of the City (1753), work of a Corfiot carver, represents the influence of Palladio. Attempted in the icono -
stases of the Ionian Islands is the transition from the stone grid-iconostasis to a decorated and carefully-executed façade. This is a local artistic tradition of the region, part of the wider artistic production of the Ionian Islands – as, correspondingly, the Heptanesian School in painting – linked with local craftsmen and materials, which creatively and successfully resynthesizes elements from both the West and Byzantine tradition, and preserves them for centuries.