Page 98 - Beholding Liberty!
P. 98
98 BEHOLDING LIBERTY!
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Andreas Kriezis (1813 - t.p.q. 1877) Portrait of Rigas Feraios, 1840
lithograph, 50.4 x 37.3 cm
signed:
Imp. Lith. de Lemercier Bénard et C.i.e. rue de Seine S.t G.n 55 (low centre)
Α. Κριεζής (bottom right)
dated: Παρίσια 1840 (bottom left)
inscribed (caption & dedication):
ΡΗΓΑΣ ΒΕΛΕΣΤΙΝΟΣ. // Καλήτερα μιας ώρας ελεύθερη ζωή, / Παρά σαράντα χρόνων σκλαβιά καί φυλακή. // Αφιερώθη η παρούσα εικών του πρωτομάρτυρος της Ελληνικής ελευθερίας τωι ενδοξοτάτωι Κυρίωι Ιωάννη Κωλέττηι / τωι κατά των της Ελλάδος τυράννων γενναίως αγωνισθέντι. (low centre)
Hellenic Parliament Art Collection, inv. n. 376
ANDREAS KRIEZIS (1813 – after 1877), after working in the royal printing and lithographic press in Athens, in 1839 went to Paris to study li- thography and painting.
He specialised in portraiture. An excellent example of his mastery both in portraiture and lithography is his lithograph of Rigas, which he printed in Paris in 1840 at Lemercier’s printing house. The sitter faces the viewer, shown in the standard manner of representation established for this precursor of the Greek Revolution. Kriezis produced a very sim- ilar variant in the painted portrait of Rigas (Bena- ki Museum, GE11176). In the lithographed variant, the intent is clear of promoting the hero, with his laurel wreath and the popular passage from his Thourios: “Better an hour of free life than forty years of slavery and prison” – the revolutionary
chant by which Rhigas sought to rouse enslaved Greeks.
Notably, the portrait is dedicated to the “first martyr for Greek freedom”, Ioannis Kolettis, president of the National (or French) Party. It is well-known that the Greek politician was influenced by the preaching of Rigas, on whose ideas of a “spacious Greece” his own “Great Idea” was based. His vision for the ex- pansion of the Greek state and the liberation of the still-enslaved Greeks was proclaimed in his historic speech on January 14, 1844, in the Hellenic Nation- al Assembly, with reference to the drafting of the constitution. It seems, therefore, that the portrait of Rigas was commissioned to Kriezis by Kolettis in 1840, while he was in Paris as ambassador of Greece to France, thus promoting himself as the ideological descendant of the great visionary Rigas.
