(b Mani, Peloponnese, 1662; d Corfu, 1729). He settled in Zakynthos c. 1685 and studied with the post-Byzantine painter Leo Moskos. From 1694 to 1699 he fought against the Turks on the side of the Venetians, who later rewarded him with estates in Leuchada and the title of ‘knight’. He studied painting in Venice between 1699 and 1704. From 1704 to 1715 he lived in Kalamata and spent his remaining years in Zakynthos, Leuchada and Corfu. The four pictures— Christ, Blessed Virgin, St John the Baptist and St Demetrios (c. 1721–2)—on the templon of St Demetrios, in Leuchada, should probably be counted among his few surviving works. Doxaras was the first painter in modern Greek art to be the subject of research (1843) and the first painter systematically to paint in oil rather than tempera. He reinvigorated post-Byzantine religious painting, orienting it decisively towards the West. The most typical example of this is his decoration of the Heavenly Vault (ceiling) of the church of St Spyridon in Corfu with scenes from the life and miracles of the saint (1727). Though preserved only in a copy by Nikolaos Aspiotes (Corfu, St Spyridon), it was directly modelled on works by Paolo Veronese in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. To the almost exclusively religious post-Byzantine painting he added at least one new subject area, the portrait, and perhaps others. He thus anticipated the development of the secular themes that were later to predominate in the art of the modern Greek state. The portrait of Johann Matthias, Graf von der Schulenburg (1719; Athens, G. Perdios priv. col., see Charalampidis, 1983) is the only surviving example of this aspect of his work. Doxaras also attempted to give a theoretical foundation to his work: he translated Raphaël Trichet du Fresne’s Trattato della pittura di Leonardo da Vinci (1651) into Greek c. 1720 (preserved in MSS at Athens, N. Lib., and Venice, Bib. N. Marciana) and wrote Peri zographias (1726), in which he recommends his pupils to represent their subjects as naturally as possible.

Part of the Doxaras family