Eccentric Renaissance

Abstract Eccentric Renaissance shapes a distinct perspective on late-sixteenth century European painting thanks to its focus on the Greek colonial culture of Venetian Crete. Leading artists on the island immersed themselves in the world of contemporary Italian painting. In response, they developed self-conscious manners of painting that hover between the traditions of Byzantine painting and the art of the Early Modern Mediterranean. El Greco defined his work as a Greek alternative to the Vasarian account of art’s history. Michaēl Damaskēnos’s late paintings address the unresolved differences that may be found in a colonial society. Geōrgios Klontzas confronted the plague and the threat of Ottoman conquest by interweaving oracular and apocalyptic imagery into the history of his own times. These eccentric perspectives led to the creation of works of art that confronted their times with great originality.