ABSTRACT
In 1962, in the light of the fact that Constantinopolitan painters were known to have been working in Crete in the early fifteenth century, M. Chatzidakis expressed the view that these artists must have played a decisive role in shaping fifteenth-century Cretan painting. The icon belonged to the Zambeccari Collection, which was bequeathed to the Italian state in 1762 and came into the possession of the Pinacoteca in Bologna in 1884. Millet described the icon as ‘Italo-Greek’ but made no suggestions as to date, while to Sandberg-Vavalà it was a ‘tavola bizantina’ [Byzantine panel], and to Kondakov, who dated it to the fifteenth century, it was ‘Greco-Italian’. The Bologna icon depicts three separate episodes from the Agony in the Garden. In the first (upper left) Christ is standing, turned towards God the Father, who emerges in bust form from an arc of heaven.
