HISTORY AND SPIRITUAL TRADITION Art Part 2: Icon Painting The
earliest portable icons in Albania come from the twelfth,
thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The Virgin Hodegetria of
Boria (Korytsa) and the Virgin of Blasti, in a cave at the Great
Prespa Lake, are considered to be among the loveliest creations
of Byzantine art. The works which have survived in this region
are deeply influenced by the artistic idiom of the Macedonian,
and still more the Palaiologian dynasty (midthirteenth to late
fourteenth century), an idiom that flourished in Constantinople
and Thessalonike. Of particularly striking beauty is the figure
of the archangel Michael in the fourteenth-century Boria icon.
Impressive specimens of Byzantine wall-painting have survived in
remote locations such as the caves at Vlastojne, Letmi, and
Kaljmet (twelfth century). Important works were produced in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, among which are the wall-
paintings in the monasteries at Apollonia and Rubik (southeast
of Skodra), and in