Asinou across Time: Studies in the Architecture and Murals of the Panagia Phorbiotissa, Cyprus ed. by Annemarie Weyl Carr, Andreas Nicolaides (review)

By virtue of its location, Cyprus is a natural crossroads, or redoubt, for the eastern Mediterranean, and Cypriot history reflects this fact. Since the fall of the Roman Empire, Cyprus has been under the control of the major powers of the day, stretching from the Byzantine Empire and French crusaders to Venice, the Ottomans, and later the British Empire. These occupying or dominating powers have all left their imprint on Cyprus’s cultural heritage, and perhaps this is no more apparent than in a tiny church in Asinou, located in almost the center of Cyprus and southwest of Nicosia.

Originally a monastery, formally known as Panagia Phorbiotissa but better known today as the church of Asinou (a name derived from the hamlet nearby), it was built in the early twelfth century under the Byzantine Empire and was later expanded and modified under the rule of the crusaders, Venice, and the Ottomans. Each successive period added murals to the church and enhanced its architecture. The first murals were painted during and shortly after the construction of the church around 1105, with the last additions put down in the seventeenth century. Today the church of Asinou is visited by tens of thousands of tourists, as well as people of faith, each year and has been declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.

Starting in the 1960s, the Asinou church site became the object of an ambitious restoration project, with an associated effort to study and catalogue the murals and architecture of the church. To highlight this effort and present the findings, Dumbarton Oaks, a research institution focused on Byzantine studies in Washington, DC, recently published Asinou Across Time: Studies in the Architecture and Murals of the Panagia Phorbiotissa, Cyprus, edited by Annemarie Weyl Carr of Southern Methodist University and Andreas Nicolaides of Aix-Marseille Université. The result is an attractive, almost coffee-table-style volume that presents a number of perspectives on the history of the church of Asinou, its murals and architecture, its place in Cypriot history and culture, and the painstaking methods used to study and preserve the site and its murals.

The chapters of Asinou across Time cover the development of the murals and paintings within the church in chronological order, starting with the original work that was created when the church was founded. The introductory chapter helpfully provides the historical, social, and cultural context of the church and is perhaps the chapter of greatest interest to the general reader wanting to become more familiar with the church, the original monastery, and its place in Cypriot history and the broader Mediterranean region. At the time of the church’s construction, “Cyprus was a prosperous, strategically important bulkhead of Byzantine naval power,” and this advantageous situation generated the resources needed to build and maintain such a meticulously decorated church, using costly pigments and other materials that were considered rare, and therefore expensive, at the time.

One is struck by the fact that the monastery remained intact and functioning under such a varying range of rulers, let alone that it expanded and new murals were added. The Venetians were especially careful not to disrupt the established religious life in Cyprus, not wanting to unduly incite Cypriots against Venetian rule. In the end, the monastery fell into disuse by the early part of the nineteenth century, but not due to foreign invaders or changing regimes. Instead, it slowly decayed because of a “slow transformation of the rural economy following a long demographic decline” in the central region of Cyprus that surrounds the church. However, the associated church—as opposed to the building itself—continued to operate to serve the local population. Limited resources available meant that the unique murals and paintings in the church were nearly impossible to maintain. Attempts were made under...