Page 227 - Beholding Liberty!

HALL OF THE TROPHIES
as the axis around which the four figures of his comrades-in-arms are arranged, under the banner, in the foreground: Two of them are looking after Botsaris and two are defending him. In the back- ground, more warrior figures and an atmosphere of distress convey the drama of this combat scene. The idealised figure of Botsaris, shown in profile, with richly decorated clothing and weaponry, would set the standard for the representation of similar images of the injury or death of young fighters in the War of Independence. Lipparini’s iconic paint- ing would be copied by other artists besides Gualt- ieri, such as his Greek student at the Venice Acad- emy of Fine Arts, Dionysios Tsokos (1820-1862), in
an oil painting produced circa 1844-47 (Athens, E. Koutlidis Foundation Collection, National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum, inv. no K803).
A testament to the widespread adoption, variety and endurance of the representation of Botsaris’s death, is the chromolithograph [cat. no II.3.19] by Sotirios Christidis published by D. Papadimitriou much later, in the early twentieth century. The popular painter and illustrator adopts the compo- sitional form of academic painting, especially the type of J.C. Langlois’ related painting, which was apparently known to Christidis through a print- ed reproduction; he executed it in his own, naïve style.
SCENES AND FIGURES OF FREEDOM The consolidation of the Struggle 227