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Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957) Catalan panel painting of the late 12th century is characterized by a marked Byzantine imprint. Although a number of scholars have argued that this Byzantine influence was indirect, and suggested that the intermediaries were Anglo-Norman miniatures (especially in the case of the altar frontal from Santa Maria d’Avià), others have preferred the notion of direct contact between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean as a result of the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 and the capture of Constantinople by a Crusader army in 1204. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the similarities between Catalan panel painting (notably the altar frontals from Avià, Baltarga and Oreilla) and Cypriot and Komnenian art — in terms of their technique, colour and iconographic models. In this respect, the drawings made in Cyprus between 1183 and 1192 in Oxford, Magdalen College, MS Gr. 3, are both proof of the existence of potentially portable workshop models, and the desire of artists to practice drawing before painting. The activity of Master Alexander, a possibly ‘Greek’ painter trained in Cyprus and subsequently working in the vicinity of the monastery of St-Martin-du-Canigou around 1200, will allow us to reformulate the question of Byzantine influence in the Western Mediterranean .
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