Page 44 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
Hellenistic quality it could also justly be speculated that this portrait is partly inspired by an expectation of the resurrection of Greek Constantinople from the tyranny of the Latin Crusaders.
In 1261, Mihail VIII Palaiologos liberated Constantinople, and subsequently, the city of Constantine was again made into a cultural centre of artistic activity.25 In the decades following the liberation of Constantinople, as we shall later elaborate in more detail, a more refined processing in the rendering of form and in the treatment of colour was the result of a new wave of interest in Classical Greek and Hellenistic art. The costumes were painted more graciously, the architecture in the background was also given more atten- tion and acquired a certain illusory appearance, whereas the treatment of the landscape became more fluid and imaginative. Thus, the liberation of Constantinople strengthened the artists’ interest in what might justly be termed as Hellenistic aesthetics.
The frescoes at the Monastery of Sopoćani in Serbia, completed by Greek painters (c.1265) shortly after the liberation of Constantinople, are the earliest preserved example of this new revival of classical form in Byzantine painting. Just like in Mileševa, in the golden background of the frescoes at Sopoćani, we again encounter a series of inter-cross- ing lines which aim at mimicking the mosaic cubes.
The frescoes at Sopoćani are of a more progressive style than those of Hagia Sophia at Trebizond (c.1260), which should be given special attention in a separate study. A care- ful but decisive transition from the conventions of the Komnenian painting towards the yet to be style of the Palaiologan painting is what makes the frescoes at Sopoćani so characteristic and historically so important. Their uniqueness can be discerned even when we compare them to examples of frescoes which were completed much after the rule of the Komnenian dynasty (1081–1185). For example, when compared to the figure of the White Angel at Mileševa (c.1222–1228, image 24), the figures of apostles in the apse of Sopoćani, as well as the figures in the Dormition of the Virgin at Sopoćani (image 28), display a more decisive, even formulaic classicism of form. Also, as seen in image 25, besides the classical rendering, the painter quite deliberately imbues the figures with rhythmic motion that adheres to volumetric balance and symmetry. More particularly, as seen in image 25, with its overall body movement, the figure on the left almost mirrors the figure on the right – and the slight difference between their stances is what provides these figures with an organic kind of unity and rhythmic dynamism. As seen in image 26, the head of the apostle to the right is in parallel motion with the heads of apostles in
25 More particularly, it was general Alexios Strategopoulos who on the 25th of July 1261 liberated Constantinople from its last Latin ruler, Baldwin II.
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