Christ by Emmanuel Lambardos

Christ by Emmanuel Lambardos depicts a plain and unadorned Christ in the Cretan School style and is executed with technical skill.

Sources document two icon painters with the same name, and it is difficult to distinguish between their signed works. They were uncle and nephew, who shared a workshop in Herakleion, Crete.

Lombardo’s lived until the end of Venetian rule in Crete and then fled with other distinguished representatives of the Cretan school.

Prominent representatives of the Cretan School flourish during the early 17th century until the Ottoman Turks captured and occupied the island.

After the Ottoman occupation of Crete, the center of Greek painting moved to the Ionian Islands, which remained under Venetian rule until the Napoleonic Wars.

Influenced by Western European artistic trends, many Cretan artists migrated to the Ionian Islands or Western Europe to enjoy creative freedom.

A successive occupation of the Ionian islands by the French and the British allowed the Ionian Islands to remain the center of Greek Art until the independence of Greece in 1830.

Cretan School of Art

The Cretan School describes an essential school of icon painting, under the category of post-Byzantine art, which flourished while Crete was under Venetian rule during the late Middle Ages.

This art movement reached its climax after the Fall of Constantinople and Cretan School artists becoming the central force in Greek painting during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries.

The Cretan artists developed a particular style of painting under the influence of both Eastern and Western artistic traditions and movements.