Page 134 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
If we take into account Vasić’s argument that, in Byzantine art, the return to the old- est of artifacts, models, and types is encountered there, where after a spiritual or political crises, Hesychasm makes a return and is again embraced by the Church,24 the observed emphasised Fayum aspect, in the aforementioned portraits at Kalenić, acquires one par- ticularly significant dimension. In particular, this reminiscence of Fayum portraits, or rather, the revival of the expressiveness of these, and the revival of the spiritual content manifested in their far-reaching contemplating gaze, are aspects which come in parallel with or are perhaps even triggered by the hesychast orientation towards the archetypal; and it is only logical that such orientation reoccurred at a time when the Ottoman Em- pire was making its final move in all of the Serbian land.
Thus, our interpretation is that in the portraits shown in images 17, 18, 20, 22 and 24, the emphasised Fayum-like gaze, however solemn, expresses a yearning for immortality, a yearning that sees Orthodox Christendom resurrect after the death brought by the Ottomans. In this sense we could imagine that while painting these portraits, besides referring to God, the painters were also instinctively referring to us today – as distant observers of the future.
Of course, to a varied degree, the Fayum aspect as one of the integral aesthetic fea- tures of Byzantine painting is encountered in most other examples and periods of Byz- antine painting. Therefore, our claim is not that the painters who worked in Kalenić necessarily had the actual Fayum portraits in mind while painting. Instead, they could have relied to some extent on models of their choice, especially for portraits of warrior saints. In this regard, perhaps a particularly emphasised and somewhat majestic collar around the neck of Saint George (image 22) indicates that painters may have partially used Despot Stephen Lazarević (portrayed in a separate fresco: image 25) as their model, thereby arriving at the pronounced Fayum aspect. The comparison between the two por- traits lends itself to such a speculation. That said, the portrait of Saint Theodore Tiron whose collar is not as pronounced (image 24) resembles the portrait of Despot Stephen even more (image 25). In fact, given that comparatively speaking, the portrait of Saint Theodore Tiron is far less idealised than that of Despot Stephen, one may wonder wheth- er the former is a latent but truer depiction of Despot Stephen.
Having said this, we argue that in view of the depiction of the dead Christ at Kalenić, shown in image 26, the existence of what we can term as artistically emphasised Fayum aspect can perhaps be further confirmed. Here, the painter has firstly rendered the eyes as open, and then changed his mind and covered the eyeballs with the skin colour in an
24 See: Miloje M. Vasić, Žiča i Lazarica: Studije iz Srpske Umetnosti Srednjega Veka (Beograd: Izdavačka Knjižara Gece Kona, Knez Mihailova Ulica 1, 1928), 204–205.
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