The mural paintings of the old metropolis in Veria (12th - 14th c.)

With this monograph, the entire collection of surviving frescoes of the church of the Old Metropolis of Veria (a three-aisled basilica with a transept and a narthex, one of the most brilliant Byzantine monuments in Greece and the Balkan Peninsula) comes to light, amounting to 447 photographs and 24 line drawings of them. They belong to 5 periods that extend chronologically from the 1st half of the 12th to the 3rd decade of the 14th century. The decoration of the church with frescoes was not carried out in one period, but in 5, due to the historical course of the city, the financial capabilities of the local church and the lords and the disasters it suffered from time to time. Thus, they do not follow a single pictorial program, they do not belong to an artistic current, while they present a thematic and technical variety. In particular, the frescoes of the third period (1222-1229) are an impressive ensemble in scope, unique in this period, whose art presents, alongside survivals of late Komnenian painting styles, comfort, artistic relevance of high quality, with expressions of the new monumental style, represented by the frescoes of the churches of Acheiropoietos in Thessaloniki (1220-1230), of Saint John the Theologian in Veria (around 1230), and especially of Mileseva (1228-1234) in medieval Serbia, whose painting represents the artistic environment of the city of Saint Demetrius...