Ottoman Greece and the Complicated Notion of the Post-Byzantine

My paper assesses the cultural perseverance of traditional Byzantine forms in Greece in the early modern period in relation to the European Baroque elements that take center stage in mansions and churches in the 18th century. By juxtaposing socio-political realities in Ottoman Greece and Venetian-held islands, I investigate how the Baroque was wedded with the post-Byzantine in Ottoman Greece. Venetian-held islands in the Aegean and the Ionian seas had a numerous Catholic population that eventually took strong roots in the local idiom, creating remarkable hybrid forms in religious architecture, art, and music such as Cretan icons. Eventually, Baroque artistic forms, clear manifestations of the aesthetic of the Counter Reformation, would come to serve an Orthodox flock (as Daphne Lappa explains for Corfu). What was the impact of such practices in the Ottoman realm? The circumstances of the Greek Orthodox community in the regions of Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace were totally different. Without Latin bishops to challenge the authority of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Orthodoxy was the connecting tissue of the Greek community offering solace, eternal salvation, and prestige for those in the higher echelons of society. Keeping the great Byzantine tradition alive was a sine qua non for their survival and eventual flourishing thanks to a remarkable network of monasteries. Newly restored monuments and paintings in Western Macedonia will provide concrete material to explore how Western formal elements crept in and were gradually embraced by local artists. Used selectively as decorative vignettes in 18th century mansions, the Baroque and rococo styles redefined the decoration of post-Byzantine churches without any sense of being rejected as foreign impurities from un unwanted Catholic sphere. My paper tries to assess the reasons that allowed for this fashion to permeate Ottoman art in Greece and beyond.