Dr Angeliki Lymberopoulou, Senior Lecturer in Art History, has been awarded £4,000 by the A. G. Leventis Foundation to continue maintaining the ‘Hell’ wall-painting database. It will remain free to access for another three years thanks to this generous funding, allowing the extraordinary artworks to be seen by as many people as possible.

The database is one of the results of a four-year long project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, on which Angeliki was the primary investigator. Having identified Crete as a key site for surviving Venetian churches with wall paintings including depictions of hell, work began in October 2010 to visit, catalogue and photograph each piece.

It was to prove to be a labour of love as many of the wall paintings were located in extremely remote settings, with journey times often surpassing how long it took to compile research. Work finally concluded in 2014, and the resulting collection offers a wealth of visual materials that are a valuable building block in researching Venetian Crete.

Dr Lymberopoulou, who also published the research outcome through Cambridge University Press, said: "I am delighted with this funding and immensely grateful to the A. G. Leventis Foundation for their continuing support in promoting Byzantine studies within and via The Open University."

Please note some imagery may cause distress, therefore consider reading the Emotive Topic Guide first.

The research outcome of the Leverhulme-funded project was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. In addition to the publication, Cambridge University Press hosts all the plans of the Cretan churches that include the iconography of Hell and feature in this database, see:

1. Lymberopoulou (ed.), Hell in the Byzantine World: A History of Art and Religion in Venetian Crete and the Eastern Mediterranean, Volume 1 Essays, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2020
2. Lymberopoulou and R. Duits, 2020, Hell in the Byzantine World: A History of Art and Religion in Venetian Crete and the Eastern Mediterranean, Volume 2 A Catalogue of the Cretan Material, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2020. www.cambridge.org/9781108690706