Kiti (Le Quid)...

A SEIGNEURIAL CHAPEL

The church at Kiti, called Le Quid by French speakers, is one of the most interesting Byzantine buildings in Cyprus. In the apse is a magnificent mosaic of the eleventh or twelfth century figuring an over-lifesize Virgin and roundels with representations of the twelve apostles.

Onto this building, at the end of the thirteenth century or in the fourteenth, the French Lords of Le Quid, of the Gibelet family, grafted a small Gothic church intended for their personal devotions and for use by other Christians of the Latin rite. It is attached to the south side of the main church.

Picture
(left)
taken
from
site:

Pictures
from
Cyprus


This Gothic church (drawing Enlart) consists of an apse covered by a semi dome and four rib-vaulted bays. The buttresses are on the inside, a practice borrowed from the South of France; they are tied to each other by pointed arches forming shallow side-chapels. Also as in Provence there is a round window above the apse; the quatrefoil tracery of this has been preserved.

The interior of the church is remarkable for a large mosaic in the central apse, in fair preservation. (Picture (right) taken from site: Pictures from Cyprus ). It represents life-size figures of the Madonna and Child standing with an angel on either side holding a globe. The composition is distinctly oriental in style, and the execution of a fine small scale mosaic in coloured glass cubes. On the soffite of the semi dome arch is a border of small round medallions containing busts of saints, now unfortunately much injured by a rough arch built to support the outer-edge of the semi dome. The general appearance of the work and its design axe so exactly similar to the mosaic fragments remaining in the Kanakaria Church, that it is evident the two works of art were by the same hand, or at least of the same period. This mosaic has been carefully studied and described by M. Smirnoff in "Byzantine Vreurmenlik" published at Petrograd in 1897. The presbyterium of antiquity is represented by three shallow steps against the curved wall of the apse but of proportions which could never have been intended for any use.

The whole of the rest of the church has been stripped bare and plastered. In their present state the brackets from which the vaulting ribs spring have clearly been altered in profile; the arches of the vaulting are simply prismatic and must always have been so.

Built into the modern wall of the chapel are three coats of arms: (1) on its left is a shield with a plain cross, probably for the Hospitallers; (2) the usual quarterings of Cyprus and Jerusalem; (3) on a shield three lions' heads erased (figure left), the two in chief affronted, that in point towards the dexter side. This latter coat of arms is presumably of the Gibelet family. The same or a very similar heraldic bearing occurs elsewhere in Cyprus.

The chapel destined for the Latin rite appears to be of the XIVth century style but the carved details about the building have been destroyed and the whole interior plastered over in a way which prevents a clear appreciation of its date. It is constructed with three bays of vaulting with ribs which spring from internal buttresses, a system of construction very common in the south of France. At the east end is a semicircular apse with pointed semi dome, above the arch of which is a quatrefoil window or oculus.

The exterior of the chapel is without character, the whole south side having been rebuilt when the campanile was added some years ago.

The chapel contains a tombstone (without armorial bearings) carved with an effigy of Simone Guers, wife of Renier of Gibelet; she died in 1302. Probably the whole building was erected at that date, or close to it, as a funerary chapel when Simone of Gibelet died. At the time of a reconstruction this interesting gravestone came to light in relaying the floor.