Handwriting Expert Solves a Medieval Art Mystery

Crime-solving techniques applied to a medieval illuminated manuscript in Paris may have solved a centuries-old puzzle—the true identity of a leading Byzantine painter who injected humanity into the rigid sanctity of Orthodox religious art. A contemporary of Giotto, considered the father of Western painting, the artist conventionally known as Manuel Panselinos was equally influential in a totally different tradition that's largely overlooked in the West, per the AP. But nothing is known of his life, and scholars now believe Panselinos was just a nickname that eventually supplanted the real name of the man for whom it was coined—likely Ioannis Astrapas, from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki.

Work attributed to Panselinos, from the late 13th and early 14th centuries, is considered the finest produced in the Byzantine empire. Art historians had long suspected that the name—Greek for "full moon"—could have originated as a nickname for some member of the so-called Macedonian School of painting, based in Thessaloniki. Recent research by a Greek monk and linguistics scholar linked "Panselinos" with Macedonian School painter Astrapas. Now court handwriting expert Christina Sotirakoglou has matched lettering on a manuscript tentatively attributed to Astrapas—the Marcian Codex GR 516, which includes an illustration of a full moon—with characters on a church painting in northern Greece, long seen as Panselinos' best work.

"It's a Phi that stands out, and is similar" in both the manuscript and the Protato painting, says Sotirakoglou. Father Cosmas Simonopetritis, a former senior administrator in Mount Athos, the semiautonomous monastic community where the Protato church stands, says Sotirakoglou's and his own research "clearly prove" Panselinos' real identity as Ioannis Astrapas. "Panselinos was a real person, and (the name) was just the nickname by which Ioannis Astrapas became known," he said. Constantinos Vafiadis, a professor of Byzantine art in Athens, says he finds merit in the theory, even though it appeared more than one painter had undertaken the Protato project. Artists' signatures were not common at the time, although some survive from members of the Astrapas family. There are none by "Panselinos." (More Greece stories.)