Visual Anachronisms in Context: Religious Painting in Venetian Cyprus and Medieval Bolognese Manuscripts

The article examines four painted churches, almost completely unknown to scholars, dating from the sixteenth century, during which Cyprus was under Venetian rule (1473–1571). The study comprises three parts: the first examines the wall paintings of the churches and through a stylistic and iconographic investigation establishes that, albeit products of different workshops, the frescoes most likely followed similar templates; the second explores the existing affinities between those frescoes and medieval Bolognese manuscript illuminations, an association which is propounded here for the first time; the last part constitutes an effort to suggest an appropriate date for these paintings by taking into account visual evidence from Venetian Cyprus.