Newly discovered Church in Cyprus : remarks on new architectural forms' modes of transmission in sixteenth-century Mediterranean

Abstract

Unpublished until now, the possibly monastic church of Saint Paraskevi (or Saint Perpyros), situated on the northern slope of the Pentadaktylos mountain range in the Cypriot district of Akanthou, is a sixteenth-century ruin of a rather common, single-nave type. It is exceptional, however, in its up-to-date Renaissance decoration, i.e., the rustication of the northern portal. This feature is unique in the context of a rural Greek church in Cyprus, where, unlike in Crete, no other Renaissance portals found in late-medieval rural church architecture have been proven. Because there are no written sources, the context of St Paraskevi's creation and the actors involved are hypothetical. Presumably, the still-unknown models were transmitted via Famagusta, but the modes of transmission remain a puzzle. One possibility would be inspiration from pattern books such as Serlio's Libri dell'architettura, which may have either directly guided the masons working on the church, or provided a model for an urban Famagusta workshop commissioned to design the church's portal. Including this curious object in broader future studies of the appearance of Renaissance forms in the late-medieval Eastern Mediterranean region might yield further insights.