Benaki Museum

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Figure 3. The Benaki Museum on Koumbari Street, 1940; by Voula Th. Papaioannou (1898–1990); plastic photographic negative; 6 x 6 cm; Benaki Museum Photographic Archives ΦΑ 6 1581; donated by the artist in 1976.

Figure 4. Angelos Delivorrias (1937–2018), photographed by Stelios Skopelitis.

Despite extending all available space at the original site, the sheer variety and volume of the Museum’s collections called for an expansion across a number of different sites, resulting in a ‘satellite’ configuration which numbers in 2021 ten venues in – and beyond – Athens. To the approximately 1,900 sq. m of exhibition space at the original site, a further 975 sq. m were added in 2012 just a few city blocks away, at The Ghika Gallery (see entries pages 50–61), in what can be considered the culmination of Delivorrias’s legacy. Named after the painter Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika (1906– 1994), who donated his home, studio and associated properties, the Gallery presents the life and work of almost 200 proponents of the modern movement in Greece between the early 1920s and the late 1960s. It was a period when relentless political unrest was matched with robust intellectual fermentation and an unrivalled flourishing in the world of the arts. The country’s contribution to painting, sculpture, print-making, architecture, photography, poetry, literature, music, theatre, cinema, philosophy, intellectual history and even art history during these years is thoroughly covered. An earlier donation (2002) by sculptor Yannis Pappas (1913–2005) and his son Alekos Pappas added to the Benaki ‘satellite system’ in the

A MUSEUM WITH A HEART

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Hair net with medallion of goddess Athena,

late 3rd–2nd century BCE

Allegedly found in Thessaly, Greece Gold, garnets; diameter 11.1 cm (total), 7 cm (medallion) Inv. no 1556 Benaki Museum of Greek Culture

This item of personal adornment consists of a central medallion surrounded by a mesh of delicate chains, which would have been gathered with a cord threaded through their end hoops. This way the jewel could be secured around a hair bun, worn at the back of a female wearer’s head. A bust of Athena, executed in repoussé out of a single sheet of gold, is enlivened with blue enamel on the goddess’s eyes. Her hair flows out of a helmet and over the background, which is surrounded by bands decorated with filigree, beading, granulation, enamelling and gems. This medallion hair net is one – and the largest – of four, discovered together in the jewellery cache known as the ‘Thessaly Treasure’; the other three, which also feature goddesses (Aphrodite and Artemis – twice) are at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. The rarity of comparable examples make this congregation of four in one cache indicative of the unprecedented luxury enjoyed by the elites of mainland Greece over the two centuries following the campaigns of Alexander III of Macedon (356–323 BCE), better-known as ‘Alexander the Great’. For the first time in history, Greece was playing a major role in the international political scene, which impacted considerably on its art. New, imported techniques and materials rendered jewels larger, bolder and more polychrome; meanwhile, Greek classical iconography and style travelled eastwards, pollinating the arts of Asia with new ways of depicting the human figure.

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HAIR NET WITH MEDALLION OF GODDESS ATHENA

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The Adoration of the Magi, 1560–67 Domenicos Theotokopoulos, 1541–1614 Egg tempera on wood; 55.9 × 61.9 cm Inv. no 3048 Benaki Museum of Greek Culture

The sixteenth century saw most of the Greek world under the control of the Ottoman Empire, which had succeeded the Byzantine Empire after the capture of Constantinople in 1453. However, some mainland ports and islands were ruled by Italian cities, most importantly Crete, which remained Venetian until 1669. This prosperous island saw the emergence of a local style of religious painting which drew on Byzantine icon tradition and on teachings coming from Italy or even northern Europe, where art was shaped by revolutionary ideas labelled as ‘the Renaissance’. One of the painters who moved confidently between such varied traditions, often bringing them together in a creative marriage, first worked in his hometown, Candia, and went on to seek his fortune in Venice, Rome and eventually Toledo. His distinct style developed gradually through studying imported engravings or, perhaps, original paintings owned by the island’s aristocratic families. In this rare early work, painted on a recycled piece of wood with the traditional Byzantine medium of egg tempera, the main point of reference is Venetian art: a densely populated scene, a classical architectural setting resembling a stage set, exotic costume, exaggerated gestures and bold juxtapositions of bright colours. In his maturity, the adventurous Cretan would gain considerable fame in his adopted home, Toledo in Spain, with the nickname ‘El Greco’, the Greek.

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THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI

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Pectoral of a metropolitan, 1738 Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey Gold, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, enamels; height 9 cm Inv. no 33795 Benaki Museum of Greek Culture

This pectoral was a badge of office for Parthenios Gavalas of Santorini, the metropolitan (bishop) of the town of Caesareia, present-day Kayseri in Turkey, an important official for the local Greek community in Ottoman times. The reverse is decorated with painted enamel miniatures: the Holy Trinity, Christ flanked by the Virgin and Saint John (Deësis), angels, cherubim, symbols of the Evangelists, etc.

The style of enamelling, executed at a Constantinople workshop, is inspired by western prototypes and bears witness to the good taste of its mitred commissioner. But what is truly astonishing is the number, combined weight and size of the individual precious stones which decorate the front of the pectoral and hang below it. Both polished and faceted, they testify to the wealth enjoyed by Orthodox Church prelates under the Ottomans. The sultan’s warrant confirming Parthenios’s enthronement to bishophood is also at the Benaki Museum, along with his mitre, cope and staff. Invested with political and legal authority, in addition to ecclesiastical power, high-ranking clerics were true princes of the Church and could afford the regalia to match.

PECTORAL OF A METROPOLITAN

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Epitaphios with the Lamentation, 1682 Despineta, active 1682–1723 Silk, gilt- and silver-thread; 115 × 155 cm Inv. no 34604 Benaki Museum of Greek Culture

This epitaphios, a liturgical veil embroidered with a scene of the Lamentation (see pages 80–81), features a balanced composition combining the horizontal line of the body of Christ, the curve created by the heads of seven mourning figures and the verticals of the columns supporting a canopy, from the arches of which hang four lamps (for this motif, see pages 38–39, 68–69) . The blue satin sky is punctuated by the sun, the moon and two cherubim hovering above trees rising from the cluster of figures. The delicate needlework accentuates the emotion of the scene – especially in the Virgin supporting Christ’s head and in John kissing His hand. Two epigraphic bands separated by a lotus scroll, and inscriptions within the central panel, convey important information to the knowledgeable viewer – or anyone with the help of a mediator: the identification of holy persons, passages from hymns sung on Good Friday, when the epitaphios is paraded, and a dedication including the master artist’s signature: ‘by the hand of wretched Despineta’ (wretched as a result of her unavoidable sins). Veils such as these were among the most costly commissions made by Ottoman-era churches, and their mostly female embroiderers were renowned. Despineta was one such artist, based in Constantinople but accepting orders from Cyprus, Alexandria, Sinai, even Romania. She employed several apprentices and is one in a line of professional needlewomen who worked at their privately-owned workshops in the capital of the Ottoman Empire. On this epitaphios, ordered for the Greek cathedral at Ankara, her signature takes pride of place, behind Christ’s head, highlighting the elevated status of this seventeenth-century female artist, a member of a religious minority within a Muslim empire.

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EPITAPHIOS WITH THE LAMENTATION

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Kifissia, 1951 Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, 1906–1994 Egg tempera on wood; 140 × 475 cm Donated by the artist in 1994 Inv. no ΠΧΓ 45 The Ghika Gallery

This five-panel work adopts the format of a Japanese screen and depicts an imaginary landscape in the leafy Athens suburb of Kifissia.

Originally sold to a private client, it was bought back by the artist in 1969 and incorporated into the decorative scheme of his dining room.

The first studies had been executed in 1942 and the finished work was exhibited in the 1952 Panhellenic Art Exhibition as Decoration of a room, a title that stressed its ‘functional’ character. Marinos Kalligas (1906–1985), director of the National Gallery of Athens, felt the need to remark that this work ‘holds a somehow separate position between painting and decoration’. This tension between ‘high’ and ‘applied’ art is often negotiated in the work of Ghika, who furnished his homes and studios as ‘total works of art’, marrying architecture, sculpture, painting and the decorative arts; in 1988 he used the same horizontal format for Unfinished Wall, a landscape study for a work similarly destined for an architectural setting (Benaki Museum ΠΧΓ 110).

However, Kifissia exemplifies further connections, between traditions: East Asian art is referenced by the panelled screen format; by the concentrations of visual interest, like the clusters of buildings framed by pictorial borders and the thickets of vegetation along a horizontal, handscroll-like axis; by multiple vanishing points; and by the ‘Three Friends of Winter’ theme expanded into a multitude of different trees and plants. Byzantine art in its turn is recalled by the use of egg tempera (see pages 26–27, 30–31, 52–53) and of reverse architectural perspective. Finally, the focus on the picturesque is reminiscent of Western European art. Ghika’s fascination with East Asia would inspire his travels there in 1958, an experience no other Greek artist of his generation had shared.

In conversation with Ioanna Moraiti

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KIFISSIA

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Decorative elements from a reception room: floor, water fountain, niches, cascade, 17th century Cairo, Egypt Marble, alabaster; variable dimensions Inv. nos 10836 & 10840 Benaki Museum of Islamic Art

One of the most memorable exhibits in the original Benaki Museum (illustrated, photograph by Georgios Boukas from the later 1930s) and a centrepiece of the Museum of Islamic Art today, the ‘Cairo Room’, as it is known, is a fragment from an unidentified Ottoman-era house. It is built of carefully shaped pieces of white, black, red, green, grey and yellow marble arranged in complex geometric designs, which are in turn positioned within panels, creating a floor and two double-tiered wall niches. Two basins have been set into the floor: the large, central basin surrounds a carved alabaster fountain, while the second basin is situated below a carved marble plaque placed at an angle against the back wall. This plaque, originally gilded, is topped with an arched panel pierced with three spouts from which water would flow, trickling down the plaque and into the basin at its foot, creating a cascade. The wall fountain is surrounded by two engaged colonettes and more marble cladding. The ‘Cairo Room’ offers a veritable sample book of Islamic geometric design and testifies to the skill of the Egyptian marble cutters who inventively incorporated marble spolia (reused architectural parts) in new compositions: the roundels in green and gray marble are evidently slices of earlier, possibly Roman, column shafts. The two fountains would delight guests with the murmur of water and also served a practical function: placed at the bottom of the central well which connected the floors of such a house, they would lower the surrounding air temperature, pushing the hot air up the well and through roof openings, and creating a welcome draft on hot days.

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DECORATIVE ELEMENTS FROM A RECEPTION ROOM

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This edition © Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd, 2021

With thanks to all those who contributed to

Text and images © Benaki Museum, 2021

writing this book, at the Benaki Museum: Zetta Antonopoulou, The Yannis Pappas Studio; Rosanna

First published in 2021 by

Ballian, Former Curator, Museum of Islamic

Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd

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and Contemporary Art and Head of the Department of Paintings; Ioanna Moraiti, Curator of The Ghika

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reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted

due to Dimitris Arvanitakis, Babis Floros, Irini

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Front cover Epitaphios with Lamentation (detail), 1682 (see pp. 34–37) Back cover The Greek Arts (detail), 1931 (see pp. 52–53) Frontispiece Pair of doors (detail), second half of 8th century (see pp. 70–71)