Michael Astrapas and his workshop

Michael Astrapas and his workshop worked on monuments in Macedonia and Serbia in the fourteenth century. Byzantine painters, who remained primarily anonymous, started to show themselves by leaving their signatures on monuments due to the period's changing political, economic, social and cultural conditions. Signatures, inscriptions and written sources preserved in churches provide information about the identity, profile, education and organization of workshops of many painters. Michael Astrapas and his workshop painted frescoes for several churches for nearly twenty-five years. Based on the monuments mentioned above, the approaches of the painters in terms of iconography and style are discussed within the general framework of Late Byzantine culture and painting.