Church of the Panagia

Panagia in Agios Ioannis (Aradena) — the end of the road To get here you need to pass the famous bridge at Aradena and drive another five kilometres to where the road ends. Then ten, fifteen minutes up a stony path. On the hill a small whitewashed church appears, with two massive buttresses flanking the southern entrance. Sea, olives, cicadas. A typical Cretan postcard — but this is not a typical church. Nobody knows exactly when it was built. The painted decoration is dated to the fourteenth or fifteenth century; the structure is probably older. The painter is unknown. The frescoes are badly damaged today — and still they make an impression. Something in the painterly naivety works: a certain streak of primitivism combined with an expressive force that needs no academic training. Four iconographic cycles fit into the single-naved interior. The Christological cycle runs through the arches — Crucifixion, Deposition, Baptism, Transfiguration. The Marian cycle contains a scene exceptional even by Cretan standards: Joachim and Anna playing with the infant Mary. Not hieratic iconographic figures — ordinary parents with a child. On the western wall — the Last Judgement. In the lower parts of the walls — saints and hierarchs. In the conch of the apse, instead of the expected Platytera, there is a Deesis: the Pantokrator between the Virgin and John the Baptist. In a church dedicated to the Mother of God, this is an unexpected choice. Lassithiotakis sees here the influence of Cappadocian monastic iconography. Whether he is right is hard to say. Perhaps it is simply the freedom of a folk artist who painted as he knew how and as he wished. Next to the church stands a freestanding arcosolium. Nobody knows who was buried there. Set into its wall is a fragment of an older architectural element — possibly early Christian. A practice known in Sfakia: old stones in new walls as a sign of continuity. Not religious continuity — communal. The new faith broke nothing; we are still the same people. Worth every kilometre.