Michael Damaskinos

Michael Damaskinos (c. 1530 – c. 1593) was born in Candia, now Heraklion, on Crete, and is one of the principal painters of the Cretan School. He moved to Venice in the 1560s, spent 1569 to 1571 in Sicily, and was a member of the Greek Brotherhood of Venice from 1577 to 1582, painting icons for the Greek Orthodox church of San Giorgio dei Greci, where twenty of his works remain. He returned to Candia around 1583 and afterwards worked mainly in Crete and the Ionian Islands. His painting stays within the Byzantine tradition while taking in Italian elements, and some works show the influence of Veronese, Tintoretto and Titian. He was the first to bring paler flesh tones into post-Byzantine painting, a change that proved widely influential, and he contributed to the fusion of the Cretan and Heptanese schools. Around a hundred works by him are known. Here: Adoration of the Kings.