Page 130 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
Besides the connection which can be observed between the painting of the Morava school and the style of painting that was to the fore in the early 14th century in Constan- tinople, Talbot-Rice also notes that there are certain similarities between the painting of the Morava school and the painting which was produced in various centers of Russia in the same period.16 This should not be a cause for confusion in relation to the painting of Theophanes the Greek, who worked in Russia. In spite of their obvious belonging to the tradition of Byzantine painting, the frescoes painted by Theophanes the Greek in the Church of the Transfiguration in Novgorod (c.1378), should be appreciated as an entirely unique category in the history of Late Byzantine painting.
Equally unique in its style is the iconography of Theophanes’ student, Andrei Rublev. Nevertheless, a comparison between Rublev’s famous icon of The Holy Trinity, shown in image 11, and the three figures in the middle of the scene of The Wedding in Cana in Kale- nić, shown in images 12 and 13, has most appropriately been made in previous scholarly literature. For example, in 1964, Svetozar Radojčić provided a particularly insightful ob- servation of the analogies between these two compositions:
“Rublev’s icon ‘Holy Trinity’ and the Kalenić group of the bridegroom, the bride and servant in the Wedding in Cana, two formally similar compositions of three figures, rep- resent the two poles of the art of that time. Rublev paints a vision elevated to the sphere of ideas – the unattainable mystery of the Eucharist. The Kalenić artist paints the wed- ding of an angel-like young couple, ennobled by the symbols of sacrifice and blood bonds,17 abandoning himself to a piety which is too free, almost sinful. Each line of Rublov’s majestic figures radiates power and mystery. The Serbian fresco is an apotheo- sis of the earthy happiness of lovers. The strange lyrical sense of tragic times flourishes in Serbian literature in the same period as the paintings of Kalenić. The Poem of Love by the Serbian Despot Stefan Lazarević is the nearest counterpart to the Kalenić Bride and Bridegroom. Recited in front of their picture, The Poem of Love would sound like speak- ing with them.”18
16 Ibid., 183–184.
17 Radojčić states that: “According to a very ancient non-Christian custom, the bridegroom and the bride drink blood mixed with wine out of the same glass, which is held between them by the bridegroom. The typically Serbian mixture of pagan and Christian rites is here brought into harmony by the power of the artistic execution.” Also, in his analysis of the scene of The Wedding in Cana in Kalenić, Radojčić observes: “Only the bride and the bridegroom at the lower end of the table, with tenderly bowed heads, are performing a ceremony of their own, not mentioned in the Scripture: the bridegroom is about to prick the finger of his bride with the pointed tip of his knife. The play of gesture is admirably conceived to the minutest detail: the bride’s hand is reposing gracefully on the richly embroidered table- cloth; it is being approached by the bridegroom’s hand holding the knife like a surgeon’s instrument and tense with concentration.” See: Svetozar Radojčić, Kalenić (Beograd: Publishing House Jugoslavija, 1964), XV.
18 Ibid., XXIV.
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