Panagia Kera near Kritsa: three aisles and several ages of fresco painting

Panagia Kera: Byzantine church and fresco gallery near Kritsa

Panagia Kera (Παναγία Κερά) stands about a kilometre short of Kritsa, beside the road up from Agios Nikolaos some ten kilometres away, at a spot called Logari among olive groves and cypresses. It is one of the most important Byzantine churches in Crete and the principal monument in the neighbourhood of the town. “Kera” is an old Cretan word for “Lady” – a title of honour for the Virgin Mary that recurs in several places on the island, most notably at the monastery of Kera Kardiotissa on the road to the Lasithi Plateau.

The church is dedicated to the Dormition of the All-Holy Mother of God, and keeps its feast on 15 August. It reached its present form by degrees: at first there was only the central nave, a single-cell domed building of stone roofed with tiles, to which two side aisles were later added. The result is a three-aisled church with a dome over the middle – low, broad and, seen from the road, oddly like a white tent pegged down by its buttresses.

The building history

The original church was probably built in the Middle Byzantine period. The earliest frescoes of the central nave are dated to about the middle of the 13th century; only fragments survive, chiefly in the apse of the sanctuary and on the arches beneath the dome. Their manner is austere and linear: the figures are rendered with restraint, the forms picked out by firm contours, and the compositions follow the inherited Byzantine order.

At the beginning of the 14th century the church was thoroughly renewed. The occasion was probably the damage done by the great earthquake of 1303. It was then that the church received a new dome, that the central nave was repainted – in the first two decades of the century – and that the two side aisles were added, together with the west entrance and the little belfry; their own decoration followed in the first half of the 14th century.

The second painting of the central part belongs to early Palaiologan art, the last great flowering of Byzantine painting under the dynasty that ruled in Constantinople from 1261. The figures move more freely, the compositions are more complex, and one senses an effort to make human feeling visible. Across the walls unfolds the Gospel cycle – scenes from the lives of Christ, of the Virgin and of the saints.

In the 16th century the gables that still define the exterior were set on the east and west fronts. In the 18th century the church was renewed once more: in 1722 the Managaris family had work carried out, and in 1732 an unknown painter repainted the icon of the Virgin. Finally, at the beginning of the 1950s, cracks in the dome were closed and the frescoes, which were threatening to come away from the wall, were cleaned and consolidated.

The frescoes of the central nave

The central nave is dedicated to the Dormition, but its decoration ranges over a much wider field. Shown here are the feasts of the Church year, the Dodekaorton, and the principal events of the Gospels: the Nativity, the Baptism, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost and other scenes. In the apse the Virgin is enthroned as the Platytera, “wider than the heavens”; the vault of the sanctuary is filled by the Ascension.

On the walls there also appear prophets, apostles, evangelists, archangels and saints: twelve prophets in the drum of the dome, four angels in its shell, the evangelists in the pendentives beneath. The dome itself, instead of the usual single Pantokrator, carries four Gospel scenes – the Presentation in the Temple, the Baptism, the Raising of Lazarus and the Entry into Jerusalem. Among the other subjects are the Massacre of the Innocents and Herod’s Feast and, on the west wall around the Crucifixion, the torments of the damned, presided over by the Archangel Michael; St George rides his white horse against the dragon. A rarity in an Orthodox church is the figure of St Francis of Assisi on the north-west pier, shown with the stigmata – evidence of how close Latin and Greek piety came to one another in Venetian Crete, where the saint was honoured as the friend of the poor.

The south aisle of St Anne

The south aisle is dedicated to St Anne; its paintings are the best preserved in the church and especially expressive. In the apse appears Anne herself, in the pose of the Platytera, and below her stand full-length holy women such as Irene, Kyriaki and Barbara. Scenes from the life of St Anne and of the Virgin survive, among them some that go back to the apocryphal gospels.

In fourteen rectangular panels, arranged in two registers one above the other, are the house of Joachim, the prayer of Anne, the Nativity of the Virgin, the trial by water – in which Mary and Joseph are made to drink the “water of conviction” to prove their innocence – and other episodes from the traditions about Mary’s childhood, as well as the journey to Bethlehem with the Virgin seated on a donkey. The painting is notable for its speaking faces, an almost narrative realism and a freer composition. Scholars connect it with the currents of the Palaiologan period and with the Macedonian School. In quality these frescoes bear comparison with the monuments of Mistra, Mount Athos and Macedonia. A donor inscription on the west wall of the aisle names the village community of Kritsa and one Antonios Lameras.

The side aisles probably served as funerary chapels as well. This is suggested by the representations of the Second Coming and by the portraits of the donors – the family of Georgios Mazizanis, who appears with his wife and child in the dress of his day. The donor portrait and the great Last Judgement are in the north aisle, the portrait on its north wall. Donors paid for the building and decoration of a church; their likenesses were at once a mark of gratitude and a plea for the salvation of their souls. It fits the picture that excavation inside and around the church has brought to light numerous cist graves.

The north aisle of St Anthony

The north aisle is dedicated to St Anthony, the Egyptian hermit regarded as the father of monasticism. Its decoration, rather less well preserved, differs from the frescoes of the central and southern parts. A different hand is at work in it, which makes plain that the church was decorated neither by a single master nor in a single campaign. In the sanctuary Christ appears as Pantokrator above the officiating Fathers of the Church; the walls are dominated by the Second Coming, told at great length and in an apocalyptic key: the apostles enthroned, the choirs of angels, martyrs and saints, the angel with the trumpet, Earth and Sea personified and giving up their dead, the weighing of souls, the damned – and a lovingly painted Paradise with trees and birds, in which the Virgin sits beside the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Taken together, the three aisles of Panagia Kera amount to a history of Cretan wall painting. Side by side here stand the austere Byzantine manner, the expressive power of the early Palaiologan age, Macedonian influences and the distinctive character of the local Cretan tradition.

The architecture

Panagia Kera is a three-aisled, barrel-vaulted church with a dome over the central nave. Its ground plan is almost square and measures only about 10 by 10.5 metres; the central nave is 3.75 metres wide and 4.5 metres high to the crown of the vault, and the side aisles are narrower and lower. The dome rests on a tall cylindrical drum above four piers. The side aisles communicate with the nave through arcades. Some of the arches were later widened, and part of the original fresco decoration was lost in the process.

The exterior combines Byzantine and Venetian features. Most striking are the windows of the side aisles: they are horseshoe-headed and framed by a dog-tooth band of limestone of the kind that marks a number of Venetian buildings in Crete. The north and south walls are propped by triangular buttresses – three on each side, added in the 14th century to take the thrust of the dome – which give the little building its unmistakable squat silhouette.

Why Panagia Kera matters

Panagia Kera owes its value not to any single fresco but to the completeness of its painted and theological scheme. In one church several stages in the development of Byzantine and Cretan art can be followed.

The central nave tells of the life of Christ and of the Virgin. The south aisle unfolds the traditions concerning St Anne and Mary’s childhood. The north aisle belongs to St Anthony. The images of the Second Coming recall the end of earthly life and the hope of resurrection.

Today Panagia Kera is at once an Orthodox place of worship, a monument of Byzantine architecture and one of the great galleries of medieval wall painting in Crete. Its frescoes show how theological tradition, local workshop practice, the influence of Macedonia and later Venetian forms came together on the island. The church is run as a state monument with an admission charge; there is parking beside the road and a café under the trees. Photography is generally not allowed inside, and it is best to take one’s time until the eye has grown used to the half-light – the morning, before the coaches from the coast arrive, is the quietest hour.