6-4-15. Kakopetria, Cyprus
The famous painted churches of the Troodos Mountains are provincial in every sense, small buildings created by local craftsmen far from the centers of artistic patronage and production. A visitor from Constantinople or Famagusta would have thought them rustic, even crude; but now, when the churches of the great cities have been sacked, burned, or converted to mosques, the humble churches of the Troodos provide rare windows into the splendid settings of Byzantine piety. Likewise, although the scenes depicted in their fresco cycles are stereotyped, the (sometimes maladroit) manner in which individual artists adapted them to contemporary fashion and local taste belies the idea that Byzantine painters were mere craftsmen striving to reproduce a template. In addition to being historically important and artistically unique, the churches of the Troodos are remarkable for the beauty of their setting. Many, originally attached to monasteries, were built far from any village, and are surrounded today by wheat fields or forest. Even those built in or near villages are dominated by the forested crags of the surrounding mountains.
My first church was Agios Nikolaos tis Stegis (St. Nicholas of the Roof), an eleventh-century chapel only a few kilometers above Kakopetria. The interior was tiny – perhaps thirty by twenty feet – but every surface was covered in frescoes, many dating to the years immediately following the church’s foundation. The iconography, predictably, was dominated by a cycle depicting the life of Jesus. Several panels were executed were remarkable skill, most notably the Crucifixion (where personifications of the Sun and Moon flanked the Cross) and the Nativity (where the grotto holding Mary and Jesus was surrounded by a rocky landscape filled with animals).
To access the churches in Galata, just south of Kakopetria, the manager of my hotel advised me to go to the local café and ask for Giorgios, the warden. This I did; someone called Giorigos, and a minute later he pulled up in a battered pickup, telling me to follow him in my car. The two churches I wanted to see were about a mile from the café. Both were products of the early sixteenth century, but manifested vastly different styles. One was decorated in the traditional Byzantine manner, with figures in stiff hieratic poses; the artist of the other, apparently influenced by Italian Renaissance art, executed the same scenes in a much more naturalistic manner.
The next church was located forty minutes away, in approximately the middle of nowhere. For once, I enjoyed the drive; the mountain air was cool enough for me to leave the windows down, and the pine-scented green hills on either side were a refreshing change from the tan plains and rocky slopes of the north. The church, Asinou, was set in a mountain meadow just off the road. The exterior was unassuming, even by Troodos standards; the two tiny rooms inside, however, were splendidly decorated. The basic iconography was the same as that of Ag. Nikolaos, complemented by such idiosyncratic touches as a painted arch depicting the torments of the damned. I particularly liked a panel showing the Forty Martyrs of Sebasteia, a troop of Christian Roman soldiers condemned to die of exposure in a freezing lake; in contrast to most local depictions (the story was a local favorite), the features and expression of each martyr were carefully and individually treated. Along the winding road back, I stopped for a quick lunch in the shadow of a pine grove.
Crossing into the adjacent valley, I followed a highway that suddenly narrowed in the vicinity of Kalopanagiotis village, whose inhabitants use the left lane as a parking lot. After a number of near-collisions, I finally worked down through a series of tenuous roads to a bridge over a deep gorge. The Monastery of Ioannis Lampadistis, my destination, crouched on the other bank, a rambling complex of wood and fieldstone buildings anchored by a splendid triple church. None of the individual panels stood out for me, but I was struck by the difference between the ‘Byzantine’ (twelfth century) and ‘Latin’ (fourteenth century) chapels; the latter showed clear signs of western influence, apparently stemming from the French Lusignan court. Beside the monastery was a small but surprisingly well-stocked icon museum, whose highlights –copiously explained by the site guard, a charming old man with nothing else to do –included a beautiful Madonna from the twelfth century. Afterward, I walked a short way along the stream rushing down the gorge, which was fed by cold sulfur springs.
My last stop in the Troodos was the village of Pedhoulas, where I spent some time in the tiny but beautifully painted Arkhangelos church. Then, following a highway dotted with rocks slipped from the adjoining slopes, I made the long descent south, finally emerging in the sunny coastal plain near Paphos. Having inadvertently chosen a hotel in the heart of the club district, I was soon surrounded by the willing victims of package tourism. Severely sunburnt Russians seem to preponderate. If nothing else, I can now wear my sunhat and torn pants with impunity, secure in the knowledge that, whatever I do, I will not be the most ridiculous looking person in sight.