Panagia Kapnikarea
| Department | Archive |
|---|---|
| Collection | Byzantine Research Fund |
| Reference No. | BRF/01/01/01/051 |
| Level | Item |
| Place |
Panagia Kapnikarea Athens |
| Dates | 1888-1890 |
| Donor/Creator |
Weir Schultz, Mr Robert Barnsley, Mr Sidney Howard |
| Scope and Content | South elevation. Noteworthy in the south elevation is the shallow cut-brick horizontal frieze above the arch of the central south door. The motif is a step pattern. The drawing is entitled (in pencil): 'Kapnikarea Athens', 'South Elevation'. Futher annotation in pencil survives. |
| Further information | Panagia Kapnikarea is also known as the ‘princess’ church’, perhaps in association with an Athenian empress of Byzantium, or as the ‘Virgin of Prentzas’ after the homonymous guerrilla chief of the 1821 War of Independence, who added the side-chapel of Hagia Barbara to the north of the building. It is a four-columned cross-in-square church with dome, narthex and a later (late 11th c.) exonarthex with a small colonnaded porch added to the south entrance in the 12th c. In terms of architecture it follows the middle Byzantine church-building tradition of the Greek mainland (‘Greek School’): instead of pure brick From the early 11th c. Greek builders at least use a cloisonné facing. The stone masonry along the base of the walls has been arranged into a series of large crosses. Dentil courses and ornamental bricks with pseudo-Kufic decorative patterns are employed with economy in the monument. On these grounds, the church can be placed about 1050, later than churches with elaborate ornamental designs in the cloisonné masonry. The neo-Byzantine frescoes of the church were painted by the renowned Modern Greek painter Photis Kontoglou (1895-1965) and his workshop. |