Page 133 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Chapter II
es of that time, it could rightly be said that, through the portrayal of tranquil immovabil- ity of the majority of the warrior saints in Kalenić, the forthcoming, unavoidable Otto- man conquest of all Serbian land (1459), and the subsequent enslavement of its people, are events which are introspectively envisaged as impermanent.
In this particular sense, it can justly be concluded that the painting at Kalenić entails a distinct political dimension, one which is most closely associated to the eschatological experience of the Orthodox faith. This conclusion is also grounded in other both recent and older scholarly findings which concern the political dimension of the art at Kalenić. A noteworthy example is an insightful study entitled Kalenić: Iconography And Political Theory, written by Branislav Cvetković (2009), who states: “The unprecedented richness of architecture and a number of triumphal features in the painting and sculpture (imag- es 28 and 29) reveal Kalenić as the commemorative church with powerful political state- ments.”23 We note that these triumphal features and the richness of architecture have as their base the same hesychast-inspired three-conch plan as the church of Lazarica, which is built approximately four decades before Kalenić.
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In a number of fresco compositions in Kalenić, such as The Numbering at Bethlehem (image 8 in the next chapter entitled Modernism of the Frescoes of Mistra), the earthy and distinctly bright palette appears to be in an immediate relationship with the deliberately extended space between the figures. It is as if the authors of the frescoes aimed at sub- duing the movement of the figures to an immovability of the otherworldly kind of light. In this, the discreet experimentations in the rendering of angular light appear to be well-bal- anced, as they do not come to contradict the sense of an atmospherically spread light.
The ethereal character of Kalenić frescoes is manifest even in the smallest details. While not losing its plastic quality, the human figure at points becomes almost vaporous in appearance, while the uniform facial physiognomies are differentiated by their ex- pressions of inward feeling – more so than through the movement and gesture. Also, in view of the expression of some of these portraits, such as those shown in images 17, 18, 20, 22 and 24, we are once again unassumingly reminded of the expressiveness of the Fayum burial portraits (image 19) – which are aesthetic predecessors of Byzantine iconography.
23 See: Branislav Cvetković, “Kalenić: Iconography and Political Theory,” in Symposium: Monastery Kalenić: On the Eve of the Six Hundred Years Anniversary, ed. Kalić, J. Place and date of the Symposium: Kalenić, 5–6 October 2008 (Belgrade-Kragujevac: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Department of Historical Sciences, Diocese of Šumadija of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 2008), 66.
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