ABSTRACT
From Eat, Drink, and Be Merry (Luke 12:19) – Food and Wine in Byzantium. Copyright © 2007 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd,
dominated Crete1
Certain table layouts in fourteenth-century wall-paintings from Crete have been tentatively labelled by some scholars as ‘Venetian Layouts’.2 Others have argued against this classification and have played down the significance of the Venetian element in the table displays.3 The aim of this paper is to focus on what the appearance of certain specifically Venetian wares in an otherwise traditional Byzantine-Christian iconography says about the daily interaction of the Cretans and the Venetians during the fourteenth century, as well as about the status the Venetians and their artefacts enjoyed on the island. I have chosen two wall-paintings representing feasts from the church of the Panagia Kera, outside Kritsa at Merambello, in the prefecture of Lassithi, eastern Crete.4 One is the Last Supper (Figure 18.1),5 the other is Herod’s Feast, which led to the beheading of John the Baptist (Figure 18.2).6 The choice of examples from the church of the Panagia Kera was suggested by the appearance of two scenes with similar table layouts, one of which can be regarded as ‘positive’ evidence of the interaction between the Cretans and the Venetians (Last Supper); the other, however, appears in
1 Special thanks to Dr Rembrandt Duits for reading this paper and for his comments and suggestions.
