Page 123 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

The Relationship between Hesychasm and the Aesthetics of Late Byzantine Painting
I
The initial purpose of this chapter was to detect and examine the ways in which Hesy- chasm influenced Byzantine fresco painting of the last phase. Due to the demanding nature of this topic, the research undertaken has led the author a number of times to change both the content and the title of the work presented here. Having said this, it should be noted that among the few significant things that have not changed, is the au- thor’s view that, collectively, the numerous publications relating to the hesychast spirit- uality do not provide a satisfying answer to a question of how is Hesychasm aesthetical- ly manifest in Late Byzantine fresco painting.1 Further, scarce and almost inexistent are the interpretations of the meaning that Hesychasm acquires once it is detected in Byz- antine painting as a purely aesthetic phenomenon.
As implied in the title of this chapter, we argue that in Late Byzantine painting Hes- ychasm is manifest in distinct ways. However, the actual scope of the present chapter is not to discuss each of the possible manifestations individually, but primarily to examine the historical and aesthetic criteria according to which certain, scarcely examined man- ifestations of Hesychasm in Late Byzantine fresco painting could be confirmed and thus appreciated by the observer. Having said this, we note that a patient reader will be able to observe that our study begins with an enquiry, arrives at a detection, and ends with an interpretation of the relevant phenomena. Of course, the fact that the present study focuses on frescoes does not mean that Byzantine icons of the same period should not be
1 Some of the noteworthy publications which relate to this topic are:
Mikhail Vladimirovich Alpatov, “Iskusstvo Feofana Greka i uchenie isikhastov,” Vizantiyskiy Vremennik 33 (1972): 190–202. URL: http://www.vremennik.biz/opus/BB/33/52152
Nikita Kasyanovich Goleizovsky, “Isikhasm i russkaya zhivopis XIV–XV vv,” Vizantiyskiy Vremennik 29, no. 54 (1968): 196–210. URL: http://www.vremennik.biz/opus/BB/29/52007
Aleksandr Ilich Klibanov, “K kharakteristike mirovozzreniya Andreya Rubleva,” in Andrei Rublev i ego epokha, ed. Mikhail Vladimirovich Alpatov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1971), 62–103.
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