One of the most intriguing problems in the study of Gothic architecture in the Latin East concerns the network of interrelationships between the major architectural centres in the eastern Mediterranean, especially the Crusader states of the Levant, the kingdom of Cyprus and Hospitaller Rhodes. Although scholars have been aware of the artistic links between these areas for decades, the Cyprus-Rhodes connection remains to this day largely unexplored, despite the obvious interest it presents for the development of ecclesiastical architecture in the region. This article examines the architecture of the Carmelite church in Famagusta and its formal aBnities with Rhodes cathedral, in order to identify the conditions and modes of transmission of architectural designs from Cyprus to Rhodes in the second quarter of the 14th century. It will also attempt to demonstrate that the same basic design had been employed for two buildings of radically diCerent status and function, in a reflection of the circumstances, financial or ideological, surrounding their creation.IN his 1933 piece on the architecture of the church of Our Lady of the Borgo in Rhodes, Hermes Balducci wrote that it is [. . .] rational to think that the Knights in the first years of their settlement in Rhodes and for their first architectural works of some importance and of a particular character, as in the case of our church, would have had recourse to their nearby and recent hosts to obtain certain groups of craftsmen whom they had appreciated in Cyprus and that besides it was so diBcult and expensive to procure directly from Europe.1The idea of Cypriot master masons plying their trade in nearby Rhodes was nothing new or original at the time Balducci was writing, since, at the turn of the previous century, Camille Enlart had already remarked on some of the similarities between the architectural styles adopted in Cyprus and Rhodes in the 14th and subsequent centuries. Enlart's view has been frequently reiterated in the literature, but the issue has rarely, if ever, been treated in a more systematic manner. My aim in this article is to broach the question through the case-study of a specific Cypriot building, the Carmelite church of Famagusta, as representative of architectural trends in that town in the second quarter of the 14th century, and to explore the church's formal links to one of the earliest ecclesiastical building projects in Rhodes, that of the Latin cathedral. It is hoped that 29
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