Page 132 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
graphed men entails an overt iconic quality. Although the three men in the photograph do not hold exactly the same posture as the three figures in the fresco, the resemblance between the two examples is quite clear and one may rightly wonder, to what extent is this photograph inspired or influenced by the detail of the composition of the The Wed- ding in Cana showing the bridegroom, the bride and the servant? Perhaps, together with his relatives, through this icon-like photograph, hieromonk Makarije wanted to share with posterity the experience of a living icon, the luminous experience of being made in the image of God, which characterizes the frescoes that he and his contemporaries re-dis- covered in Kalenić.
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In the frescoes at Kalenić, the tendency towards the transcendental dominates over other aesthetic aspects. Accordingly, the serene stature and expression of the warrior saints in Kalenić is a novelty in the Serbian painting of the Morava school. In other mon- asteries of the Morava basin the warrior saints are portrayed as somewhat restless in their expectation of the enemy.20 As noted by Svetozar Radojčić (1964), in Kalenić, only two warrior saints are painted with slightly livelier movements: “St Theodore Stratelates, who is drawing his sword from its scabbard, and St Procopius, who has drawn his sword and is holding it straight in a solemn way, as at some ceremony.”21
Thus, we can rightly ask ourselves: is not the tranquil stance of the warrior saints in Kalenić an act out of stillness which takes place within the noise of the Ottoman armies? In interpreting the work of a fervent supporter of Hesychasm, Nicolas Cabasilas (c.1320 – 1397/8), Bishop Kallistos Ware states: “Inner stillness can exist even where there is little or no external silence; for the true flight from the world is not spatial but spiritual, and the true desert is always the desert of the heart.”22
In our view, St George, shown in image 22, appears to be consumed in the contempla- tion of the things to come: his gaze is not directed towards the observer, but is directed slightly to the side – as if he is trying to simultaneously recollect the future and the past. This portrait of St George, as well as other portraits similar to it, such as that of Saint Theodore Tiron (image 24), can be understood to express the solemn spirit of all Eastern Christendom of the 15th century. Accordingly, bearing in mind the political circumstanc-
20 This difference has originally been noted by Svetozar Radojčić. See: Svetozar Radojčić, Kalenić (Beograd: Publish- ing House Jugoslavija, 1964), XII.
21 Ibid., IX–X.
22 Kallistos Ware, ‘Act out of Stillness’: The Influence of Fourteenth-Century Hesychasm on Byzantine and Slav Civili- zation (Toronto: The Hellenic Canadian Association of Constantinople and the Thessalonikean Society of Metro Toron- to, 1995), 11.
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