Page 40 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
Serbia and elsewhere where more provincial qualities are apparent, the frescoes at Nere- zi must have been rendered by an artist from Constantinople.15
In the depiction of Lamentation at Nerezi (image 21), the drama of the biblical event is most directly conveyed through the expressive manner of the drawing. Although em- braced by the Virgin, and by a male figure (possibly St Peter) to the far right, Christ’s body appears to be self-suspended in air. The contours of the landscape appear to echo around the upper part of Christ’s horizontally placed body, while from above, the deep blue sky seems to be gradually pressing down on the rest of the composition. The line of the horizon flows uninterruptedly from the far left, and rhythmically corresponds with the halo and the contours of the embracing Virgin. One of the crucial features of this fresco is the continuation of the line of Christ’s left arm into the line that outlines the bent back of St John. More particularly, as seen in image 20, Christ’s hand is venerated by the bowing figure of St John (to the right), and the flow of the line of Christ’s hand is clearly continued into the contour of St John’s curved back, eventually leading to the portraits of the two bowing figures to the far right.
Although lifeless and loose, in Lamentation at Nerezi, Christ’s body initially appears to the observer as laid on some kind of a horizontal platform. This illusion is owed to a rather stiff rendering of the horizontally stretched white drapery beneath Christ’s body. In this way, the painter has implied that the burial is the next event of the narrative. This effect is further enhanced by the overall gravity of the composition, which instructs the spectator’s vision to keep focusing on the lower part of the scene, where Christ’s lifeless body is parallel with the horizontal red margin – which marks the lower end of the com- position. The distinctly horizontal position of Christ’s body also assists the mechanism of the visual narrative, where in a linear succession the rest of the figures convey differ- ent levels of a personal relationship with the sacrificed Christ. Such textual reading might start from the left, with the most intimate sorrow of the mother of God, and then continue to the right, where Saint John is bowed with reverence, and then extend to the two figures on the far right – one of which holds Christ’s feet in fear and sadness. The female figure which can be discerned on the far right is probably that of Mary Magdalene.
Thus, in the scene of Lamentation at Nerezi the eye of the spectator is seamlessly guided by the eurhythmos of the drawing, as the contours of all major features system- atically and dynamically connect the expressive portraits, which, in a manner of speak-
15 David Talbot-Rice, Byzantine Painting: The Last Phase (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 30. Talbot-Rice states: “Similarities to the frescoes at Nerezi are found in the fragmentary evidence at Djurdjevi Stupovi in Serbia (1168) and to some extent at Bačkovo in Bulgaria. The metropolitan style of Byzantine painting had by this stage reached Russia, where it subsequently acquired a unique kind of expression.” See also: Ibid., 35.
38