Byzantine art
In 1852, he traveled with his father to Athens, where he replaced Rafaello Ceccoli (fl.1830s-1850s) at the Athens School of Fine Arts and became interested in Byzantine art. He painted several frescoes in Greek churches, and was at the forefront of a movement to "modernize" Byzantine art by introducing elements from Western art such as naturalistic perspective and anatomy. In this, he is sometimes credited with discovering Byzantine art for the world of modern art, but such reform was controversial in Greece, finding fierce opposition from those opposed to what they saw as attempts to replace longstanding Greek traditions with foreign ones.