Page 136 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
If we consider the Orthodox belief, that the vision of the uncreated Taborian Light (the light with which transfigured Christ shone on Mount Tabor), can be internally ex- perienced through a particular practice of prayer (Prayer of the Mind),29 in relation to the fact that, in Renaissance painting, light is not embodied within the figures but is depict- ed as cast from an angle, the theological dimension of the scene of Nativity in Perivleptos in Mistra becomes particularly clear (see image 15 in the next chapter entitled Modernism of the Frescoes of Mistra). More specifically, this composition literally expresses the birth of Light into the world, where light radiates not only from within each depicted figure individually, as is the case in the style of the previous periods of Byzantine painting, but from the entire landscape, and from the entire painted surface. In view of this fresco, the observer is literally immersed in the otherworldly kind of light. Because of this, the most appropriate definition for the style of the composition of Nativity in Perivleptos would be theological realism – because, through the atmospheric radiance of the inner light, the theological reality of Christ’s incarnation is given preference over the depicted narrative and its individual features. A very similar treatment of light is observed in the frescoes at Kalenić, which were painted approximately half a century later.
If after seeing the prime examples of Renaissance painting (such as that shown in image 4), one looks at the 15th century frescoes at the monastery of Kalenić (images 5, 12, 13, 16 and 17), they will undoubtedly come to a clear realisation that, contrary to a com- mon inaccurate perception, Byzantine painting was not itself developing towards the kind of realism characteristic of Renaissance painting, and that, since its beginnings, Renaissance painting branched off the Byzantine experience and followed a rather dif- ferent line of development. In particular, Duccio’s (c.1255–c.1318) maniera greca already heralds the transition of Italian painting from Byzantine to Renaissance.30 Subsequently, in his departure from maniera greca, Giotto (1277–1337) still adhered to a recognizably Byzantine arrangement of the composition,31 but he did not produce a style that can be regarded as a natural continuation of the development of Byzantine aesthetics.
29 We are here referring to the teachings of Hesychasm, which will be discussed later in this chapter.
30 Accordingly, Thomas Mathews states: “The rediscovery of the art, so central to European painting of subsequent centuries, was due to direct contact with painters from Byzantium. Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1255–1316), regarded as the master of the maniera greca or Greek style, stands at the end of a century-long development of Italo-Byzantine paint- ing.” See: Thomas Francis Mathews, The Art of Byzantium: Between Antiquity and the Renaissance (London: Calmann & King, 1998), 157–158.
31 Thus, for example, in discussing Giotto’s Lamentation in Arena Chapel in Padua, Mathews points out: “He is the first to confront the problem of foreshortening figures; the grieving St John extends his arms into the depth of the pic- ture (see image 3). The iconography of the picture, however, remains thoroughly Byzantine, introduced in the twelfth century. The compositions developed in Constantinople were the starting-point of Renaissance narrative art.” Ibid., 159.
134