Page 373 - Beholding Liberty!
P. 373
HALL OF THE TROPHIES
ΙΙ.9.7
Unknown artist
Paleon Patron Germanos blesses the flag of the Revolution at Kalavryta on the 25th of March 1821, after 1870
oil on canvas, 94 × 133 cm
Michael and Demetra Varkarakis Collection
THIS LARGE-SCALE PAINTING was made after a work of the same subject by the French painter Alphonse Marie Adolphe de Neuville (1835-1885), circa 1870, titled The Patriotic Oath of the Greeks. De Neuville’s painting was widely pub- lished as lithographic prints [cat. no Prelude 1]; it was erroneously identified with the proclamation of the Greek Revolution by Germanos, metropolitan of Old Patras, a title also given to this large-scale
painting. The need for the historical documentation of incidents of the War, retrospectively identified the image of the cleric, centre, blessing the flags and warriors with the events of March 25, 1821, at the Monastery of Agia Lavra in Kalavryta. The multi-fig- ure painting, however, with its richness of colour and variety of detail, responds to the horizon of the expectations of the late-nineteenth-century public, one generation after the revolutionary events.
SCENES AND FIGURES OF FREEDOM The visual memoralization of the Struggle 373
