MUSEUM OF BYZANTINE ART ANTIVOUNIOTISSA
Superb collection of Greek Orthodox paintings and icons in the museum of the oldest church in Corfu.
The museum is located at the top of a 50-step staircase, in the oldest church in Corfu, Our Lady Antivouniotissa ("The one that looks out to sea"), a place that is already worth a visit. Renovated in 2000, it houses a superb collection of Greek Orthodox paintings and icons. This museum-church has the particularity of showing, in a rather exhaustive panorama, the manifestations of the religious art of the Ionian Islands from the 14th to the 16th century. We can see the aesthetic evolutions of the Corfu society, especially during the coexistence of the Greek Orthodox with the Venetian Catholicism. Already established in the fifteenth century, as evidenced by the archives, it is the oldest church in Corfu. But historians do not know if the church was dedicated to the Virgin from the beginning, which the visitor can assume by admiring the painted mural with a representation of Christ Pantocrator on the right side of the temple, the stone or wooden partition separating the sanctuary from the nave, characteristic of Byzantine churches. However, it may also have been dedicated to the Virgin of Incarceration, a feast celebrated on December 26 by the Orthodox Church as "Synaxis of the Virgin". Note that the main church consists of a single rectangular central nave, with dimensions of 20.50 x 9.10 m, following the classic proportions of Corfu churches. For more information, take a look at the somewhat austere but detailed website.
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Très belle collection d'icônes du 15 éme et 17éme siècle