ABSTRACT
From the text of Akotantos’ will, the figure emerges of a professional painter in the first half of the fifteenth century, who has a workshop in the city of Candia and is about to travel to Constantinople, perhaps to keep himself informed about matters relating to his craft. However, the fact that ipso facto the Cretans and the Venetians coexisted, and had of necessity to live together, led gradually to their mutual interaction. Painters’ signatures in Latin are encountered on Cretan icons, revealing that these works were destined for a Western clientele, inside or outside Crete. The texts of both the commission contracts and the apprenticeship agreements prepared by the notaries of Crete have the same structure as equivalent documents found in the organized societies of Western Europe. Venetian-held Crete in the sixteenth century breathes the atmosphere of the Renaissance, in which, too, the artistic creation of the period develops.
