ABSTRACT
The Venetian period on Crete (1211-1669) was distinguished by artistic developments which connected the Orthodox and Byzantine worlds with Roman Catholic western Europe and the Renaissance. From the late thirteenth century European architectural forms came to the island – for example, Gothic building techniques were incorporated into Latin and Orthodox churches.1 By the early fifteenth century there were more than a thousand small Orthodox churches in the rural villages, decorated with Byzantine art forms and iconography.2 In the fifteenth century art production was centred on the capital Candia (modern Herakleion) with many painters and new forms of icons emerging to meet the demands of the city’s cosmopolitan
and multiethnic population.3 In the sixteenth century Cretan artists travelled into Europe, notably Domenikos Theotokopoulos – El Greco (1541-1614), who visited Venice and Rome before settling in Toledo, Spain in 1577.4 For many centuries Cretan art and artists played a significant role in the cultural interactions between the Orthodox sphere and western Europe.
