- Hell from the Church of St Paraskevi, Kitiros
Damned in Hell in the Frescoes of Venetian-dominated Crete(13th- 17th centuries)
On behalf of the Warburg Institute, Dr Rembrandt Duits will participate in an international network, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, researching the depiction of Hell and the punishments of the damned in churches in the eastern Mediterranean and specifically on Crete during the period of Venetian domination (1211-1669). The project is led by Angeliki Lymberopoulou, The Open University, UK and Vasiliki Tsamakda, University of Mainz, Germany.Around 750 Byzantine and Post-Byzantine frescoes survive in Cretan churches, the majority of which remain unpublished or appear in general surveys with no intention or space for in-depth analysis. No fewer than 77 of these fresco cycles contain representations of Hell. The research team has received £176,600 from The Leverhulme Trust to photograph, catalogue, examine and publish these frescoes. The aim is to place the representations of Hell in the Cretan frescoes in a wider geographical and cultural context involving both Greek-Orthodox and contemporary western examples (the Balkans, Cyprus, Cappadocia and Italy). The material will be made accessible to scholars in a database and a publication and will provide a stepping stone for future research on the frescoes, the iconography of Hell, and its social and historical context.Rembrandt Duits will assist with gathering and processing data from the churches on Crete and will provide an essay on comparative material from Italy, for which he will make use of the extensive iconographic resources of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection.