Italianate haloes in early Cretan icons

Cretan icons often displayed a precious decoration of golden halos with incised, stippled, and/or impressed designs. The present study points out that these motifs should not be interpreted as manifestations of nostalgic and anachronistic attitudes on the part of post-Byzantine painters working in Candia for Greek Orthodox and Catholic clients. Rather, they appear already in several early Cretan works dating around 1400, which took inspiration from technical devices and ornamental motifs worked out in the workshops of Venice during the second half of the fourteenth century and appropriated in icon painting probably through the mediation of mixed-style works produced in both the lagoon region and Venetian-ruled Candia.