Maltese Corfiots: the Greek connection
Professor HENRY FRENDO, Director of the Institute of Maltese Studies, has just returned from a US-organised Mediterranean Studies conference in Corfu at which he spoke about the Maltese of Smyrna (Izmir) before and after the Great Fire of 1922. He seized the opportunity to find out more about the still surviving and ethnically conscious community of Maltese Corfiots
Malta is to have a new consul in Corfu in the person of Spiros Gauci, a fifth generation Maltese Corfiot. No more deserving candidate could have been identified by the Foreign Ministry because Spiros is a historian, the secretary of the Catholic Archdiocese of the Ionian Islands, and speaks English and Italian as well as Greek. His Maltese as such is gone and understandably so, as it has been very much assimilated and integrated into its Hellenistic context since the early 1800s, but he empathises closely with Maltese ethnicity. He addressed the Emigrants Convention hosted some months ago in Valletta by our Foreign Ministry and is the author of a substantive illustrated bilingual study entitled The Chronicle of the Maltese Sisters in Corfu (Corfu, 2007, pp. 290) in Greek, translated into English by Irena Mouzakiti. (I had somehow found a copy in Gozo, which I bought.)
Maltese Corfiots are one of the very oldest ethnic migrant settler communities in the Mediterranean, who still number some 3,000 or 3,500. Whereas the Maltese communities in North Africa and the Near East were practically all forced out, although a few individual families survive to this day, on the whole fate has been kinder to the Maltese in Greece, as in France.
Some months ago in Bezier, southern France, I had occasion to address some 1,400 pieds noirs at the Cercle Algerianiste, several of whom later came up to me to attest to their Maltese ancestry. One, Monique Cassar from Avignon, spoke fluent Maltese, which her grandmother had taught her!
However, these migrants histories are different. Maltese descendants living in France today (most of whom were born in France or were even personally familiar with it) were forced to go there following the bloody Algerian civil war and the subsequent independence of Algeria and Tunisia as recently as the late 1950s or early 1960s. Maltese Corfiots, on the other hand, started settling directly in the Ionian Islands from Governor Thomas Maitlands time in the first quarter of the 19th century.
Some moved from one Ionian island to another, but the largest colony was always in Corfu as remains so to this day. Most have also remained Catholics although I met a Greek Orthodox prelate (in Kythera) who claimed Maltese descent (even citing his familys ancestral village). The Archbishop is a Spiteri (Hellenised to Spiteris). He has been the subject of a just published biography in Italian and Greek (Ioannis Asimakis (Ed), Donorum commutatio: Studi in onore dellarcivescovo Ionnis Spiteris OFM Cap. Per il suo 70mo genetliaco, Thessaloniki, 2010; pp.821).
Hellenistic Greek Art - News
The painting technique, known as "tetrachromy," was used by artists of the Classic and Hellenistic periods in Greece, and Papale teaches portrait workshops utilizing the style. The exhibit can be viewed through July 6 in the gallery room at The Mad
My father is a Chinese-American art historian who lived in Alexandria, Egypt (where I was born ) in the 1960s, when he was studying Greek art from the Hellenistic period. My husband is a reluctant Christian from Beirut who has been sympathetic to the
His Maltese as such is gone and understandably so, as it has been very much assimilated and integrated into its Hellenistic context since the early 1800s, but he empathises closely with Maltese ethnicity. He addressed the Emigrants Convention hosted
That solitary trek across Europe in the mid-1930s developed his linguistic talent - already fluent in French and German, he added Bulgarian, Greek and Romanian to his languages - and also his ability to hit it off with people of various nationalities
(Photo by D. Panagos) “It is my prayer that the creation of the Bouras Award, which would have been impossible without my respected parents and beloved wife Anna of blessed memory, will serve to perpetuate the tradition of Orthodoxy and Hellenism in
Tapestry of Art Through Time: Hellenistic Greek Art (300 - 1 BC)
You might recreate any of the art of this period, mimicking the original artist's style (Hope you can find one of the artists of this period. There were mosaic artists, vase painters, and even two incomplete illustrations for Homer's work "The Odyssey." I had a heck of a time finding images and only found success with sculptures and vases.) or making the art unique to your own style.
Thanks William. I had so many positive comments and interest expressed before I began this blog but so far, not too many submissions. I hope it gets more interests as we move along through time. I actually have a piece ready for paint for this challenge and hope to get to it today. (It has been busy around here with a husband gone on business so much of the time!)
I will accept your images to any of these challenges at any time. I will post a new challenge in the early days of each new month. If any of you wish to write up something about the next period, or an artist in the period I just wrote on, please let me know ahead of time and I'll have you "guest" write the next post before I move onto the next period. I'm really excited to get to certain periods (I love the Renaissance and the Baroque), and certain movements and schools (the Bauhaus fascinates me!)...I would kind of like to keep these in order (the analness in me) so you should be able to plan ahead. Know that if your image comes in after the next month starts, it will indeed be added to the period for which it was made. It just will not be at the top of the blog rolls because, as you know, the latest entry always is on top. While I should be able to tell, we can't always bank on that, so make sure you let me know what period for which you are sending the image. Use any medium, any style of your choice to get the feel of the period across.
Greek Gold from Hellenistic Egypt (Getty Museum Studies on Art): 
Greek Gold from Hellenistic Egypt (Getty Museum Studies on Art): Hellenistic Greek Art - Bookshelf
Art in the Hellenistic age
This book is an interpretative history of Greek art during the Hellenistic period - i.e. from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, to the establishment ...Hellenistic art, from Alexander the Great to Augustus
Describes Hellenistic artistic developments that emerges in fourth-century Macedon, looking at the representations of royal and private individuals; the design, ...A history of Greek art, with an introductory chapter on art in Egypt and Mesopotamia
Primitive Statuettes from the Greek Islands. London, British Museum 59 ...Hellenistic Sculpture II, The Styles of Ca. 200-100 B.C.
In this respect, note our general reassessment of the minimal influence of non- Greek art on the development of Hellenistic forms, in contrast to previously ...History of art, the Western tradition
HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE We know very little about the development of Greek sculpture during the first hundred years of the Hellenistic era. ...Detailed Information Directory
Hellenistic art - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hellenistic art is the art of the Hellenistic period and dating from ... Hellenistic pottery designs can be found in the Pakistani city of Taxila which was colonized with Greek ...
Hellenistic Art
more Greek posters. Greek Art: The Hellenistic Period (323 - 31 BC. ... During the Hellenistic period art underwent dramatic transformations and evolved ...
Hellenistic civilization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hellenistic civilization (Greek civilization beyond classical Greeks) represents the zenith of Greek ... though much of Greek culture, religion, art and literature still ...
Art of the Hellenistic Age and the Hellenistic Tradition ...
One of the immediate results of the new international Hellenistic milieu was the widened range of subject matter that had little precedent in earlier Greek art. ...
ArtLex on Hellenistic Art
Hellenistic art defined with images of examples from history, great quotations, and links to other resources.
