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Rafał Quirini-Poplawski


21. Pera, Dominican church of S. Paolo (first half of the 14th century), vault of the choir
with the remains of frescoes
created in the 14th c. and representing certain features of Byzantine art of the Palaeologan
period; they include, among others, representations of Baptism of Christ and St. Mark the
Evangelist.^
An exceptionally interesting mural painting was found during the archeological exca-
vations conducted in 2004 in the interior of one of the gate towers in the Cembalo fortress
in Crimea (fig. 22); the painting presents an image of the Holy Virgin and Child. Due to its
similarity to the style of paintings in the Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora, Constanti-
nople, which was observed by its discoverers, the painting has been preliminarily dated to
the first half of the 14th c. and it is being associated with the capital school. However both
the dating and the origin of the painting seem to be unclear as the construction of the
Cembalo fortress began in 1387, and the part in which the fresco was discovered, dates
back to the 15th c.90 91
Remains of a big cycle of paintings (with inscriptions in Greek) have been preserved in
the altar section of St. Stephen’s Church in Caffa. Small fragments of paintings dating
back to the Genoese times are moreover to be found inside the so called ‘mosque’ (upper
section of the saint’s silhouette and crest) and in the Church of the Apostles in Soldaia (in
90 See n. 26.
91 Artem U. STEPANOV, Elena P. STEPANOVA, „Otćet o restavracionnoj rabote” [Report on the Restoration Work],
[in] Svetlana B. ADAKSINA, Vladimir P. KIRILKO, Viktor L. MYC, Otćet ob arheologiceskih issledovanidh sredne-
vekovoj kreposti Cembalo (g. Balaklava) v 2004 godu [Report on the Archaeological Researches of the Medieval
Fortress of Cembalo (City Balaclava) in 2004] (Materiały Uźno-Krymskoj arheologićeskoj ekspedicii, Vyp. 4), Sankt-
Peterburg - Simferopol’ 2005, pp. 170-173.