ABSTRACT
The image that Famagusta presents today is but a shadow of the city’s visual presence in the fourteenth century. From only the skeletons and ghosts of the monuments and their decoration we draw conclusions regarding the identities and origins of Famagusta’s patrons, painters, and architects. Our conclusions and assumptions are driven by the dramatic scale and elaboration of the Gothic vocabulary used in so many of the churches of the city. Our curiosity is piqued by the very fragmentary and faded nature of the paintings within the churches. Immediate associations are made with the painted Byzantine churches of the Troodos mountain range and other Orthodox monuments of Cyprus. But this binary dialogue between Gothic and Byzantine is familiar to almost all studies of art in the eastern Mediterranean, and particularly examples produced within the crusading environment. The conflicts and coexistence of the Orthodox and the Latin communities of the island have been the foundation of much research.1
