Allen Memorial Art Museum bulletin

              latter as Creto-Venetian. This distinction may not always be easily
applicable, since more often than not it would be based on purely
stylistic criteria, and should be reserved for those cases where internal
evidence is quite strong.02 This distinction docs not hold within it a
qualitative judgment, though usually Creto-Venetian work is of lesser
quality than Cretan work, since it is the product of artists who absorbed
the Cretan style "second hand" in a foreign milieu. Whether a particular Creto-Venetion icon should be attributed to an Italian or a
Greek will have to remain a matter of speculation since, to my knowledge, no Creto-Venetian icons are signed. However, I would be inclined to think that more often than not these apprentices and students
of the Cretan masters were young Greeks.
In terms of the above definition, the icon of the Hodegetria in the
Oberlin Collection (fig. 1) is a Creto-Venetian work. Though it clearly
belongs within the Cretan tradition of icon painting, both coloristically
and technically, it also exhibits certain characteristics that show it to
be the work of an artist trained on Italian soil. The Virgin's deep
wine-red maphorion and her medium-blue tunic (it now appears to be
green because of chemical changes in the azurite), the Child's ochre
garment with its gold striations and the gold background, belong to
the color scheme common in Cretan icons of the Virgin and Child.03
02 Chatzidakis divides the Cretan painters active in Venice during the period
of 1570-1640, into those who came from Crete as mature painters (lcones, pp.
51-90) and those who were formed in Venice under the guidance of "professors of Greek painting" (ibid., pp. 91-105). He based this division on material found in the archives of the Confraternity and stylistic and qualitative
criteria. The painters of the second group, he points out, although they do not
depart from the consecrated manner and the established types, lose the feeling
of that inner rhythm which is characteristic of the best Cretan work. As a result of this loss the repetition of traditional technical procedures in the work
of this second group becomes a superficial characteristic without real foundation.
03 The use of deep wine-red, approximating purple for the Virgin's maphorion
and medium or dark blue for her tunic is common in Cretan icons (e.g., figs. 3,
9-11). The colors of the Child's garments vary. Usually, in icons of the
Virgin of the Passion and the Glykophilousa, He wears a bluish-white chiton
(i.e., tunic) and an ochre himation with gold striations (e.g., figs. 3, 9); in icons
of the Hodegetria sometimes He wears an ochre chiton and a dark blue himation, both with gold striations, (e.g., fig. 10) and at other times both an ochre
chiton and an ochre himation witb gold striations (fig. 11).
I am indebted to Mr. Richard Buck, director of the Intermuseum Laboratory
in Oberlin, for a very thorough technical report on the Oberlin icon. Beside
the change of azurite into green, it may be of interest to mention that the ochre
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