Book Review: Maniera Greca in Europe’s Catholic East: On Identities of Images in Lithuania and Poland (1380s–1720s) by Giedrė Mickūnaitė

The question of Greek imagery – loosely defined – and its dual status as both antithetical to and symbiotic with Western European visual culture has animated art historians, both narrowly and broadly conceived, since at least Giorgio Vasari's oft-cited critique of the maniera greca and his celebration of Florentine art's providential liberation from it. Over time, the perception of ‘Greekness’ in style has been variously interpreted: as a marker of antiquity and old age; as an emblem of things outdated or unfashionable; as a symbol of the schism between the Latin ‘West’ and the Orthodox ‘East’; as an association with the Byzantine Empire; as evidence of acheiropoietic iconicity – images not made by human hands and their claimed authenticity; as a stylistic distinction between East and West; or as a feature of either local tradition or foreign imposition, especially in Eastern European contexts. In modernist painting, it has even been used to probe the limits of two-dimensional flatness and the truthfulness of the medium.