Page 148 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
frescoes at Perivleptos in Mistra not been preserved to our day. In our view, the atmos- pheric and indeed material quality of light, achieved in part through the softness of modeling of form, is an experience which Kalenić painters had likely inherited from the frescoes at Perivleptos in Mistra. At the very least, we should accept that it is not impos- sible that the Kalenić painters, or the main painter on his own,60 could have travelled to Mistra, in which case he (or they) would have seen the frescoes at Perivleptos, and man- aged to preserve the memory of the transcendental light as a prevailing experience. In such a scenario, one must appreciate how apperceptive a painter must be in order to adopt, in view of the frescoes at Perivleptos, that which cannot be copied or justly re- corded in note-form:61 the omnipresent, transcendental light.
Svetozar Radojčić’s following observations indirectly support our view that it is due to its treatment of light and the heightened level of abstraction that the style of painting in Kalenić should be associated with the style of painting in Perivleptos. However, as can be gathered from the citation that follows, Radojčić neither relates these phenomena to the frescoes at Perivleptos in Mistra nor to the hesychast teaching:
“The light, transparent colouring of the Kalenić frescoes is an isolated phenomenon in the Serbian painting of the early 15th century. Light brown, light red, strong yellow, light green – all these favorite colours of the Kalenić artists were rare in other old Serbi- an paintings. Neither before Kalenić nor after it do we find similar frescoes in the des- potic state of Serbia. Three conspicuously new features appear in the structure of the Kalenić style: light colours, subdued plasticity of the human face, and strongly empha- sised lines. As a result of these novelties, a reverse relationship is established between the human figure and the landscape or architectural setting. In the earlier painting the human figure was dominant, and the architecture or landscape was represented in the background in diminished, toy-like forms; in the best frescoes in Kalenić, however, the human figure becomes suddenly ephemeral, almost negligible. The Magi pass hastily across the scene, almost like shadows, before the towering, massive architecture which forms the background. A new process begins in which inanimate objects and natural scenery becomes (sic) larger and more solid, while the human figure, represented by a nervous arabesque, becomes smaller.”62
60 There is no written evidence about the authors of frescoes at Kalenić, but the comparison with certain miniature paintings, which were signed by a certain Radoslav, has led the scholars to conclude that this painter must have been the main of the painters who worked at Kalenić. Ibid., 104.
61 Communicating new trends through small-scale manuscripts and drawings was the effective but also limited means for passing on new ideas and trends in painting, and thus, a visitation to an actual church would undoubtedly have constituted a more substantial experience for any painter.
62 Svetozar Radojčić, Kalenić (Beograd: Publishing House Jugoslavija, 1964), XX–XXI. 146