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Cesare Daponte and the depictions of new martyrs in the katholikó of the Monastery of Xeropotamou

• Πολυβίου, Μιλτιάδης, Δ.

The katholikó (main church) of the Monastery of Xeropotamou was decorated with wall-paintings in 1783, on the basis of an iconographical programme put together by the well-known scholar-monk Cesare Daponte. The iconography of the inner narthex is original in that it presents, apart from the set subjects, 34 representations of new martyrs, 32 of which cover the four pillars which divide the space of the inner narthex per se from that of the chapels on either side. Identification of the sources used as the basis for the choice of the new martyrs represented has been made possible thanks to certain references by Cesare himself, from which it appears that these were, on the one hand, certain cases which he recorded himself, either from direct, personal experience, or from oral information, and on the other, a written collection of martyrdoms belonging to his friend PapaIonas, a monk at Kavsokalyvia. Depictions of individual new martyrs were a well-known, if not very common, phenomenon of the period, with obvious symbolism, often emphasised even more by their depiction on pillars, given that the new martyrs were called pillars of the Church. In the case of the katholikó of the Monastery of Xeropotamou, it is clear that the host of persons depicted and the location of the scenes reveals a conscious effort on the part of Cesare to impart greater significance to the symbolism, enriching the established subject matter and expressing the spirit of Hellenism of the age, which was beginning to have confidence in itself and was no longer content with complete devotion to tradition.

• Languages and Literature

• Λογοτεχνία