Page 42 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
Unlike in the scene of Lamentation at Nerezi, in view of the Crucifixion at Studenica the spectator is not preoccupied with the drama, but becomes attentive of the smallest of details which function effectively within a more static composition. The blue background of quite a cosmic sense is filled with stars of golden colour, where to the left side of the composition, the red morning sun represents the beginning of the New Testament, where- as to the far right, in line with the sun, is the moon, representing the passing of the Old Testament. Beneath Christ’s right arm and roughly above the Virgin’s head we see two miniature figures, that of the angel and another female saintly figure personifying the Church as a bride: escorted by the angel the Church is receiving blood and water (in a chalice) from a pierced torso of Christ’s crucified body. The analogous miniature person- ification of the Synagogue is depicted as being escorted out of the composition by anoth- er angel – to the far right.
The frescoes at the monastery of Mileševa in Serbia, are most clearly the work of the 13th century Greek painters trained in one of the main imperial centres: Constantinople, Nicaea or Thessaloniki. These artists were most probably trained in the technique of mo- saic. As observed by Vojislav Djurić, they were able to realise the founder’s idea of pro- moting the mosaic technique through fresco painting.19 Thus, in Mileševa, in the golden background which is applied in the frescoes of the naos, and in one composition above the entry into the naos from the narthex, the painters have drawn small cubes in order to mimic the effect of the mosaic. The frescoes in the sanctuary and those in the narthex have a blue background without the drawn cubes.
The authors of the frescoes at Mileševa worked approximately between 1222 and 1228. Their arrival to Serbia owed to the efforts of the Serbian king to be and a founder of Mileševa, Vladislav.20 Three distinct ways of rendering the saintly figures are noted by Djurić to exist in the frescoes of Mileševa.21 Near a figure of St Demetrius, the frescoes are signed by three painters: Demetrius, George and Theodore.22 In our view, the Hellenistic character of the figures and portraits at Mileševa has so far been somewhat underappre- ciated in scholarly literature.23
19 Vojislav Djurić, Vizantijske Freske u Jugoslaviji. Drugo izdanje (Beograd: Jugoslavija, 1975), 35.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., 36.
22 See also: David Talbot-Rice, Byzantine Painting: The Last Phase (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 40. 23 The following observations of Mileševa frescoes by David Talbot-Rice constitute a significant exception: “Yet the
angel is a figure of almost classical majesty (image 24), and may be compared to that of the eight century in Santa Maria Antiqua at Rome, which has always been signalled out as a striking example of the survival of the classical style in Early Christian Art. In fact the Angel at Mileševa justifies the application of the term Renaissance to the art of this age perhaps more than any other figure, for in it are blended both hints of a new humanism and features that indicate a return to the spirit of the antique. The way in which the scene is shown is also interesting, for the Resurrection was
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