Page 56 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
observed in their rendering of Jacob wrestles with an angel at Perivleptos (image 39), even at this transitional phase, Mihail and Eutychios demonstrate a highly abstract and an almost cubist understanding of the human form. However, there is more to their style than a mere tendency towards abstraction and a pronounced sense of cubism.
In image 40 we present a drawing which, by emphasising the basic shapes and the dynamic interdependence of features, aims to demonstrate that Mihail and Eutychios, as paradoxical as this may occur, consciously adhered to abstract solutions for the sake of clarity of human form, as well as for the sake of harmony and unity of the composition as a whole. This makes these two painters medieval abstract realists, and perhaps, in view of its style the entire “Macedonian school” could be renamed and understood as Abstract Realism.
Mihail Astrapas and Eutychios were commissioned by the Serbian king Milutin (1282–1321) to decorate the following churches: the church of The Virgin of Ljeviška40 in Prizren in Kosovo and Metochia (renovated in 1307 and decorated around 1310–1313), St Nikita in Čučer near Skopje (built before 1316) in FYROM, the small chapel of St Joachim and Anna at the Monastery of Studenica (built in 1314 and decorated around 1316), St George in the village of Staro Nagoričino (decoration completed in 1317/18) in FYROM, and the church of the Monastery of Gračanica in Kosovo and Metochia, where they com- pleted the work by 1321. They (or perhaps one of them) are also believed to have painted certain frescoes in the church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć in Kosovo and Metochia, around 1300; but there is no evidence that can unequivocally confirm this.
In our view, inside the small chapel of Saints Joachim and Anna at the Monastery of Studenica, Mihail Astrapas and Eutychios completed the work which is as refined as Panselinos’ work both in Protaton and in the chapel of St Euthymios in Thessaloniki. For example, in image 42 we see the same level of sophistication in the rendering of the fig- ures and the treatment of colour. Also, there is a strong possibility that Mihail Astrapas and Eutychios had seen how Panselinos managed, within a rather small chapel of St Euthymios in Thessaloniki (1302/3), to render on a micrographic scale forms which are of a monumental style – a decision which was necessarily influenced by the limitations
40 As argued by Djurić, given the great size of the church building, in The Virgin of Ljeviška, which was the cathe- dral church of Prizren, it is most probable that Mihail Astrapas had worked with more than one assistant; Eutychios, who assisted Astrapas in both earlier and subsequent projects, was most likely one of them. In the narthex of The Virgin of Ljeviška there is an inscription which mentions the name Astrapas. In St Nikita (c.1316) and in Staro Nagoričino (1317/18) Mihail Astrapas and Eutychios have also signed their work. Certain scholars have claimed that the name As- trapas refers to a separate individual. However, we know that Astrapas is the surname of Mihail because he signed his work in Perivleptos in Achrida (1294/5) as painter Mihail Astrapas. See: Vojislav Djurić, Vizantijske Freske u Jugoslaviji. Drugo izdanje (Beograd: Jugoslavija, 1975), 49.
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