Page 62 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
only the fresco decoration in the Church of the Transfiguration in Novgorod and the icons of the iconostasis of the church of the Annunciation in Kremlin are preserved. The frescoes at the Church of the Transfiguration are preserved only in fragments, which are fortunately in good condition; they date to 1378.52
The unprecedented characteristics of Theophanes’ style have puzzled a number of scholars in the past. He was also an enigma for his contemporaries. “A philosopher of great cunning” who “uses his mind to ponder the lofty and wise ideas,” and in whose work “the small detail will reveal the whole to your understanding” – are the words said by Theophanes’ friend and biographer, Epiphanius the Wise.53 The freedom with which he constructs his compositions, the wide brush-work reminiscent of the prehistoric cave painting, and a deliberately simplified colour-palette, are aspects which can collectively be encountered in Theophanes’ rendering of The Old Testament Trinity at the Church of the Transfiguration (image 57). In the same church, portraits such as that of Abel, then St Stylite Simeon Junior, St Macarius of Egypt (image 58), and Stylite Olympius, bespeak an asceticism of the painter perhaps more so than of the painted personages. All of Theoph- anes’ portraits in the church of the Transfiguration are rather expressionistic. Particular- ly in the portrait of St Macarius of Egypt there is a highly abstract rendering of the hu- man form, as if the painter aspired to ascribe to the saintly personage a value of a sacred kind of inscription – almost letter-like.
Therefore, in their simplicity Theophanes’ portraits are quite close to expressionism and to abstraction. Comparatively speaking, they are indeed much less realistic than the portraits rendered by the Byzantine painters of previous periods. Further, the sharp brush strokes of Theophanes, the decisive manner of his drawing, and the free and broad arrangement of the figures within the composition, are aspects which, in our view, be- speak the influence of the change of the environment that the artist had undergone after leaving Constantinople.
Coming from Constantinople where there was limited room for aesthetic innovation, Theophanes must have been profoundly inspired by the broad landscapes of Russia – which in each season amount to a combination of few dominant colour-tones. Thus, for the backgrounds of his fresco compositions, Theophanes uses a neutral silvery-blue col- our, for the faces he uses an earthy orange-brown similar to terracotta. The garments of saintly figures are of silvery pinks, greens, pale yellows and pearl whites, while the dom-
52 The Church of the Transfiguration in Novgorod was built in 1374. See: Viktor Lazarev, Old Russian Murals and Mosaics: From the XI to the XVI Century. trans. Boris Roniger (London: Phaidon Press, 1966), 146.
53 See: Mikhail Vladimirovich Alpatov, Theophanes the Greek (Moscow: Izobrazitelnoye Iskusstvo Publishers, 1990), 192–193.
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