ABOUT
Karoussos Archives is a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring and reintegrating the world's significant Byzantine art heritage while ensuring its continued wonder and creativity for future generations.
As an informal Management Body, it supports Byzantine monuments on a non-profit basis, forming synergies with organizations and businesses and allowing monuments to be viable and integrated into modern society.
It attempts to re-establish the Byzantine cultural asset and reintegrate it into the modern context using the rich archival material of late post-Byzantine painters Dionysius and Iannis Karoussos. Using cutting-edge methods, it ensures the flawless transfer of Byzantine content to the digital age, with the goal of redefining Byzantine art and its implicit connection with sustainable development.
THE HISTORY
The Karoussos Archive holds the entire visual material of the late fresco painters Dionysius and Yannis Karoussos, who represented two major avant-garde art periods in Orthodox Ecclesiastical art:
i. The Nazarene (pre-Raphaelite) movement, which was a reaction to Neoclassicism and the academy system's conventional art education, and
ii. The renaissance of contemporary meta-Byzantine art, distinguished by an enriched post-Paleologan personality.
Over 200 original worksheets (anthivola) from major mural paintings in Orthodox churches, including the Athens Cathedral, St. Panteleimon in Athens, St. Andrew in Patras, and many others, are preserved in the Archive.
Tens of thousands of photographs and slides were captured during the construction process from scaffolding levels, depicting details found as high as 43 meters above ground level.
These images are especially valuable because they contain details of frescoes that would otherwise be impossible to study due to the height and scale of the churches. Furthermore, they illuminate the layers of the painting work process in general.
Dionysis Karoussos started the collection in the early 1900s, and it contains a large number of late nineteenth-century gravures and lithographs, as well as rare anthivola from the painter's final Nazarene period.
After the mid-twentieth century, the Collection grew to include Yannis Karoussos's unique repository of post-anthivola (large worksheets on rice paper, which were used as blueprints for monumental, mural paintings in churches). Many of these worksheets are redrawn, including notes, in order to solve architectural problems such as distortion and perspective.
Many of these worksheets include the architectural plan and iconographic circle of the churches where the mural paintings are placed. This section of the archive is significant because it illuminates the long history of the modern construction of twentieth-century churches, where the use of concrete in the dome construction was particularly innovative.
Both painters' libraries round out the Archive's collection. They include some rare publications as sources for their artwork.
ACCESS TO THE ARCHIVES
Access to all materials in the Archive is at the discretion of the Director. Due to the fragile nature of the Archive's material, the number of people admitted for research may be limited. Written applications from suitably qualified individuals must reach the Archives at least thirty days before the start of any proposed study. Those wishing to consult archival material should first make contact with the Archives via email.
COPYRIGHT POLICY
Users of the Archive may request reproductions of photographs only for academic research purposes. Worksheet reproduction (anthivola) is not permitted. Professionals interested in obtaining access to this type of Archival material for fresco commissions should contact the Director.
Any resulting publication, whether as a book, thesis, article, or other digital or audiovisual media owned by the Archive, should include appropriate acknowledgment and copyright permission.
Before being sent to the publisher, any material ready for publication will be shown to the Archives in its digitized form. Karoussos Archives reserves the right to delete or amend any reference, without prejudice to any legal right governed by the respective intellectual property laws. ​
