Cretan School - 17th Century

17th Century

Prominent representatives of the Cretan School during the 17th century were Father Emmanuel Tzanes (Εμμανουήλ Τζάνες, 1610–1690), Emmanuel Lambardos and Theodoros Poulakis (Θεόδωρος Πουλάκης, 1622–1692). The Cretan icon painters continued to flourish, until the mid-century, when the Ottoman Turks occupied all the island except for Candia, which finally fell after twenty years of siege in 1669. After the Ottoman occupation of Crete, the centre of Greek painting moved to the Ionian Islands, which remained under Venetian rule until the Napoleonic Wars. A new artistic movement was created called the Heptanese School which was mostly influenced by Western European artistic trends. Many Cretan artists migrated to the Heptanese or Western Europe to enjoy the artistic freedom. A successive occupation of the Ionian islands by the French and the British allowed the Heptanese to remain the centre of Greek Art until the independence of Greece in 1830.