ABSTRACT
On 4 July 1499 two merchants, Giorgio Basejo from Venice and Petros Varsamas from the Peloponnese, placed three commissions for a total of 700 icons, all depicting the Virgin, with the Cretan painters Michail Foukas, Nicolò Gripioti and Georgios Mitsokonstantes. The contracts between the parties, the two merchants on the one side and the respective painters on the other, were drafted by the Cretan notary Georgios Choumnos and were all signed on the same day. The transactions took place in Candia, the capital city of Crete, where each of the three painters had his own icon workshop. The delivery dates were specified, and advance payments were granted to the painters. It is mainly the surviving contracts, preserved at the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, that enable us to collect information regarding icon production and trade in the island.
