Maria Angelina Doukaina Palaiologina and her depictions in post-byzantine mural paintings

The Serbian Despot of Ioannina Thomas Preljubovic and his wife Maria Angelina Doukaina Palaiologina were frequently connected with religious endowments and artefacts that were donated in churches and monasteries. One of them, an icon of the ?Doubting Thomas? with the depiction of Maria Palaiologina among the Apostles, was donated by Maria to the monastery of Metamorphosis (Great Meteoron) most probably in the memory of her husband Thomas. This rare iconographic type is traced in post-byzantine painted monuments in Epirus, Thessaly and Macedonia from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. The transmis?sion of the above iconography is due to the spiritual and artistic influence of two important monastic centers, the Philanthropenos monastery in Ioannina and the Varlaam monastery in Meteora region, whose founders - the Philanthropenos and Apsaras families - were strongly connected to the Serbian rulers of Ioannina and especially Maria Palaiologina.