Page 129 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Chapter II
of the Hesychast Debate is deliberately placed as a second third of this chapter, dividing it therein into two corresponding parts; the reader who is familiar with the relevant his- tory of the Hesychast Debate will not be at loss if they skip our brief summary of it.
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Great art is often produced in periods of wealth and security, and this is predominate- ly the case with Byzantine art and architecture. However, although the last two centuries of the Byzantine Empire are characteristic for their political and economic crises, within the same period, Byzantine painting was simultaneously experiencing its climax. In 1389, at the battle of Kosovo, the Ottoman Empire defeated the army of the Serbian Tsar Lazar Hrebeljanović.14 The Ottomans expanded greatly in the decades following this battle and the fall of Constantinople quickly became inevitable.
Prior to 1389, the already existing tension between the Orthodox Church and the Ro- man Catholic Church heightened during the theological controversy known as the Hes- ychast Debate, which lasted between 1341 and 1352, and which ended with the affirma- tion of the Orthodox Church’s belief that the uncreated light with which Christ shone on Mount Tabor, can be and is experienced by those who practice the Prayer of the Mind (Νοερά Προσευχή). Subsequently, approximately in the period between 1350 and 1375, the particularly bright, warm and atmospheric compositions of Nativity, Baptism, and Transfiguration, as well as other themes, were painted in the church of Perivleptos in Mistra. The equally bright, warm and atmospheric frescoes in the church of Kalenić were completed between 1418 and 1427, a few decades prior to the fall of Constantinople.
In 1968 David Talbot-Rice has, in a broader sense, noted the paradoxical revival of the Serbian medieval painting which can be observed in the frescoes of the Morava school, at a time of the ominous threat of the Ottomans, as well as pointed out the likelihood that the teachings of the hesychast philosophy might have played a significant role in the artistic developments of that period. He observes the following: “Perhaps it was the effect of an escapist mentality; perhaps the character of the principal patron, the Despot Stephen (image 25), was responsible, for he was himself a poet and he made of the Mon- astery of Manasija a centre of thought, writing and learning; or perhaps the teaching of the hesychast philosophy, which was flourishing on Athos and in Greece at the time, also exercised an effect here, for it advocated salvation by way of contemplation and visionary experience.”15
14 In 1459 Serbia was entirely conquered by the Ottoman Empire.
15 See: David Talbot-Rice, Byzantine Painting: The Last Phase (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 183.
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