Download PDF | C. Mpakirtzes (ua.), Mosaics Of Thessaloniki. 4th 14th Century ( Athen 2012).
182 Pages
PROLOGUE
It is well known that all periods of Byzantine art are represented in the ae of Thessaloniki. Indeed, this city’s mural mosaics are masterpieces of inestimable historical and artistic value. Yet, they have not been given the attention they deserve. There are no relevant mono | rea g series of recent photographs which would eraphs, nor is there a good series of recent photographs whic | make these works accessible both to researchers and the general public, T has > tak » Max Hirmer > Rotunda, and old photographs, such as those taken by Max ee) in the Rotu | are still reproduced. In the early twentieth century, in the context of the Eastern Question and whilst Thessaloniki was in the throes of the Balkan wars and the First World war, there was intensive international interest in its Byzantine monuments because the city was then at the epicentre of military operations and political fomentations.
After its liberation in 1912, the cessation of hostilities and the transformation of Thessaloniki into a European city ofnorthern Greece and seaport of the Balkans, large-scale restoration works were carried out on the principal churches, so that they might be used again for Christian worship (Acheiropoietos, St Demetrios, Latomou Monastery, Hagia Sophia, Holy Apostles). However, scholarly interest in the monuments was confined almost to a local level. During the interwar years, dominant figure in the affairs of Thessaloniki’s Byzantine monuments was Andreas Xyngopoulos, under whose direction important discoveries and conservations of mosaics were made, as in the Latomou Monastery and the church of the Holy Apostles.
After the Second World war, the responsible Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities undertook major projects, under the direction of the Ephor of Byzantine Antiquities Stylianos Pelekanidis (1943-1962). It was then, for example, that restoration work was completed (1948) in St Demetrios, a large part of which had been destroyed in the 1917 fire, the mosaics in the Rotunda were conserved on the occasion of the IX International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Thessaloniki in 1953, and of Hagia Sophia later. Works were continued in the 1960s and 1970s by the Ephors of Byzantine Antiquities Phani Drosogianni, Myron Michailidis, Pavlos Lazaridis, Efthymios Tsigaridas.
A turning point for the consolidation, conservation and study of the Thessalonikan monuments and their mosaics was the 1978 earthquakes. The Archaeological Service of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture joer forces with the Agency for the Restoration of Earthquake Damage in Northern Greece (YAXBE) of the Ministry of Public Works to organize and implement, for the first time, an extensive programme to rescue and conserve the monuments, their mosaics and wall-paintings. This was done with the supervision of an interdisciplinary team led by Stylianos Pelekanidis, Professor Emeritus of Byzantine Archaeology at the University of Thessaloniki, and with the participation of the Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities of Thessaloniki through the Ephor Eftychia Kourkoutidou-Nikolaidou.
The authors of the book were consecutively for forty years, from 1976 onwards, the Ephors of Byzantine Antiquities of Thessaloniki: Eftychia Kourkoutidou-Nikolaidou (1976-1981, 1986-1996), Chrysanthi MavropoulouTsioumi (1981-1986) and Charalambos Bakirtzis (1996-2007). After the 1978 earthquakes and primarily during the critical period after 1981, when the Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities of Thessaloniki assumed full responsibility for the projects, they directed not only the consolidation, conservation and presentation of the precious mosaics and their restoration, but also all works on the monuments of Thessaloniki, together with their collaborators — archaeologists, architects and conservators of the Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities of Thessaloniki, who worked with devotion and frequently in very difficult conditions. Warm thanks are due to all.
The necessary research carried out prior to embarking on the works as well as whilst they were in progress revealed new evidence and enriched our knowledge of the mural mosaics of Thessaloniki, giving scholars the opportunity to study and connoisseurs to enjoy these monumental creations of Byzantine art.
With this book the authors offer what they have gained from their contact over the years with the wonderful world of the mural mosaic and specifically the mosaics of Thessaloniki. Thanks are due to the 9th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities of Thessaloniki for providing material from the archive of photographs and drawings. We express our gratitude to the British School at Athens for permission to publish drawings and photographs from its archive, and to the philologist Thodoros Mavropoulos for kindly reading the Greek texts and his constructive linguistic and literary comments.
The authors are particularly grateful to Kapon Editions, which years ago had expressed the desire to publish for the first time the corpus of surviving Byzantine mural mosaics of Thessaloniki. And this it has done.
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