Komitades village

Komitades is a village in the Sfakia region 4km north-east of Hora Sfakion, located precisely at the exit of the Imbros Gorge. Exactly in the centre of the village, a few steps away from the main road, lies the double-aisled church of Saint George, the first work of iconography by Ioannis Pagomenos with frescoes which, according to the inscription date, from 1314AD. We are speaking of a probably conservative painter who is thought to have painted about 40 churches in Western Crete with particularly static, expressionless faces and emphasis on details of eyes, jewelry and dress. His conservatism is striking compared with the great developments in icon painting which can be observed in the first period of Paleologian art. He does not cease, however, in the midst of all those negative elements, to create a completely specific and personal genre, almost naïf, so as rightly to be the first named artist bequeathed by the island. The next were to come fifty years later, the Constantinople Fokades. He painted the icons in many churches in West Crete, mostly in the Selinou region,but also in Alikampos in Apokorona and left interesting examples of Byzantine art inextricably tied to the local tradition.

A little outside the village, in the west, is located the church of the Virgin of Thimianis where the uprising against the Ottoman Turks began at the end of May, 1821. Every year the anniversary is celebrated, equivalent to the start of the revolution in the main part of Greece in Ayia Lavra.

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