MADONNERI — This is the name given in Venice to those painters of sacred images, mostly of Cretan origin, who from the 14th century, but especially from the 15th until almost the 19th, worked and had their workshops in that city, where there flourished a colony of Greeks who, by the end of the 15th century, managed to have their own “school” and their own church. From there they spread their products in great quantity throughout the Balkan and Russian worlds, as well as, more limitedly, in Italy itself. Last heirs of the Byzantine tradition, they debased it into a mechanical repetition of ancient schemes in which it was rare to find anything more than artisanal skill. And while in contact with Italian and especially Venetian art they grafted new elements into their methods and justified for themselves the designation of “Veneto-Cretan,” they rarely succeeded in assimilating them to any profit.
The most typical of the madonneri was Andrea Rico of Candia, active in the late 15th century; in the following century the role of leading master fell to Michele Damasceno, and in the 17th century the most notable figures were Emmanuele Zanfurnari and Emmanuele Zane of Rethymno, poet and priest as well as a most prolific iconographer. Greater interest, however, attaches to the figure of Giorgio Clontza, who lived between the two centuries and, like later Teodoro Pulaki of Chania and the painters of the Ionian Islands, drew particular inspiration from Italian Mannerism with results of some value. One may also recall Domenico Theotocopuli, who was originally from Crete and in the early phase of his artistic activity was closely tied to the painting of the madonneri.