A Notable Byzantine Artist Has Been Identified by a 700-Year-Old Handwriting Study

The identity of a notable Byzantine painter has been discovered using a handwriting analysis studying a Medieval illuminated manuscript, the Associated Press reported this week.

Manuel Panselinos, as the artist is known, was a contemporary of Giotto and equally influential among Byzantine art for adding a sense of humanity, including facial expressions and greater attention to proportions and depth, into otherwise rigid Orthodox religious works.

When experts could identify nothing of the artist’s life, however, they began to suspect that Panselinos— meaning “full moon” in Greek—was merely a pen name. Work attributed to the artist from the late 13th and early 14th centuries is considered among the finest examples produced in region during that time.

Byzantine art decorates churches in Greece, Serbia, and other Eastern Orthodox countries that comprised the Eastern Roman Empire and, later, the Ottoman-Turkish Empire. It is characterized by its highly stylized and elongated figures, abstract forms, flattened color, and sharp contours—typically decorated in gold.

Panselinos and his contemporaries are known for creating a kind of renaissance among the style for reviving forms and techniques from antiquity.

Research conducted by Greek monk and linguistics scholar Cosmas Simonopetritis connected Panselinos to the Macedonian School painter Ioannis Astrapas from the northern Greek city Thessaloniki. Handwriting expert Christina Sotirakoglou subsequently matched lettering from a manuscript attributed to Astrapas with those on a church painting by Panselinos in northern Greece.

Earlier research linked Astrapas with the artist and scholar who wrote and illustrated the early 14th century Green text, the Marcian Codex GR 516, on a variety of topics like astronomy and music theory. A full moon was, in fact, painted in the illustrations.

The analysis “was very difficult, because the writing on the wall paintings is in capital letters, and the painters subdued their personal handwriting to conform” to the traditional format, Sotirakoglou told the Associated Press. By contrast, “The Marcian codex is written in very small lower-case letters.”

Artist signatures are uncommon for the time, however, and more of Panselinos’ work will need to be analyzed to confirm the find.