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Modern Description: The extraordinary church of Aghios Demetrios at Pourko is Kythera's most interesting Byzantine monument. (In Livadi take the left fork, signed for Aghia Elessa and Moni Myrtidíon, at the point where the main road turns towards the right and to the north. Keeping left at the junction after 1 km, you come to the locality of Pourko after a further 1.8 km. The church of Aghios Demetrios is in the valley below and to the left, 250 m down an un-surfaced track.) The setting of the church can best be seen by carrying on up the road to the Monastery of Aghia Elessa, a large modern monastery on the peak with very fine views, which remains uninhabited for most of the year. From here the church of Aghios Demetrios is visible in the fold of the fertile valley below: its site suggests something that is often the case with dedications to Saint Demetrius – that the church may originally have been built over a pagan sanctuary of Demeter, whose places of cult often lay well outside habitation and in fertile valleys where the cereals which the goddess protected were cultivated. From closer to, the church seems like an enormous piece of sculpture, its organic growth and undulating volumes possess a plasticity of great appeal. All this is due to the fact that the church is not one, but four churches in one building – all of different sizes, different forms, with different orientations, and yet contiguous, intercommunicating and possessing only one entrance between them all.
The entrance is in the west wall of the last of the four churches to be built. You first enter 1) the northwest church – oriented due north; dedicated either to St. Basil or the Archangel Michael; dated to the late 13th century; with small dome and two apses, (later) segmental templon screen in masonry, and paintings of figures of saints, principally to the right in the sanctuary. From here you pass into 2) the north church – oriented a little to east of due north; dedicated to St. Nicholas; dated to the mid-13th century; with one apse, and extensive, fine painting remains in the apse and sanctuary in particular. Passing directly on from here, you enter 3) the tiny (2 x 3.7 m) northeast church – oriented a little north of due east; dedicated possibly to the Virgin; dated to the mid-13th century; with one apse and only fragmentary and poorly preserved paintings. Returning to the north church, you pass (left) into 4) the south church – oriented almost due east; dedicated to St. Demetrius; dated to the early 13th century; with dome and two apses, and extensive and fine wall-paintings in most areas.
A start at unravelling the dates and campaigns involved in the painting can be made in the north church of St. Nicholas, where, on the pilaster in the middle of its left-hand (west, in this case) wall, is a partially legible dedicatory inscription which cites the names of a founder (Nikolaos Kontodonatos) and – unusually – a painter (Archdeacon Demetrios of Monemvasia). Scholars have tried to read a lost date at the foot of the inscription which has led to an erroneous dating of the paintings (and therefore of the whole complex) to the late 12th century: in fact the inscription is referring to an ecclesiastical indiction of a hundred years later. All this need not distract the visitor from the enjoyment of the vibrant paintings of finely-robed saints on the same wall of the church, and of the arresting design of the figure of St. Nicholas in the apse, all of which is the work of Demetrios of Monemvasia. In the south church, there are probably three layers of paintings, which in places (e.g. the north apse) can be seen one below the other: but these layers are separated by a matter of decades only. Unusually, there are a number of larger narrative scenes in the church:- a Crucifixion on the west wall, a Presentation of the Virgin, an Annunciation (below the dome), a Nativity, etc. The richer pigments in these scenes and in the figures in the apses, combined with the artists' delight in costume and architectural detail, suggest that Kythera had begun to have closer artistic ties with the imperial capital, Byzantium, than it had ever had before in its history.
Wikidata ID: Q110304151
Trismegistos Geo: 3356

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

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