Antiphonitis

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Antiphonitis is a Byzantine church in the Kyrenia district in northwestern Cyprus that was built in the 12th and 15th centuries.

Building history

Exterior view, 2014
Interior view, 2014
Pantocrator

The first church and its monastery were built in the 12th century in the style of the Comnen dynasty , making it the youngest church of its kind on the island. In the 14th and 15th centuries, Gothicizing renovations were carried out, such as the narthex with its barrel vault , which was in front of it in the 14th century, and the originally wooden-covered loggia made of pointed arches on the south side in the following century , supported by slender columns.

The dome of this church is not supported by four arches forming a square, but by eight arches that form an irregular octagon. In the drum below the dome can be twelve windows light to enter. A number of frescoes on the walls and columns as well as a Christ Pantocrator in the dome were created in the 15th century, but there are also some works from the earlier construction phase. However, the majority of the works are badly damaged, and some have fallen victim to international art theft. The Last Judgment and the Jesse Root , which were well preserved until 1974, were cut out in rectangular pieces, separated from one another and brought onto the market via an art dealer based in Germany. The German police returned the works of art to the owner, the Archbishop Makarios Foundation in Nicosia, where they were subjected to a scientific investigation which made it likely that it was two different artists who had created the works.

The baptism of Christ in the Jordan on the south-west pillar is comparatively well preserved . On the other hand, the depiction of the Last Judgment in the northern part is largely destroyed, as is the root of Jesse on the south wall, the family tree of Christ. On one of the columns you can see the Byzantine hymn writer Romanos Melodos († between 555 and 562), who is dressed in a white tunic; In the book he is holding there is a text to which appropriate late Byzantine notations have been added. On the north-west pillar there is a well-preserved fresco depicting the birth of Mary, which, like the loggia, clearly borrows from the Italian Renaissance of the late 15th century.

literature

  • Sister Daniilia, Elpida Minopoulou, Fr. Demosthenis Demosthenous, Georgios Karagiannis: A comparative study of wall paintings at the Cypriot monastery of Christ Antiphonitis: one artist or two? , in: Journal of Archaeological Science 35 (2008) 1695-1707.

Web links

Commons : Antiphonitis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Alessandro Chechi: The Settlement of International Cultural Heritage Disputes , Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 140 f.

Coordinates: 35 ° 19 ′ 37.7 ″  N , 33 ° 37 ′ 0.5 ″  E