Page 63 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Chapter I
inating tones of his compositions are the orange-brown and silvery-blue. Concisely speaking, Theophanes’ palette can be compared to the colours of the vast Russian land- scapes in autumn. Of course, the overall uniqueness of Theophanes’ style is related both to his arrival in Russia and his actual Constantinopolitan background and heritage.
Before leaving for Russia Theophanes was well trained in the Palaiologan tradition of painting and was undoubtedly aware of the theological currents which were prominent at the time (such as Hesychasm). In fact, our view is that in the work he completed in Russia, Theophanes acts in a sense as an Orthodox painter-theologian from the heart of Byzantium who is experiencing new visual and cultural influences. However, he did not ponder – in the academic sense – on how to renew the Byzantine style, but rather, in his painting he arrived at new levels of simplicity by recapitulating and theologising his overall experiences as a migrant-artist. In this particular sense Theophanes’ journey and biography is to some extent comparable to El Greco’s experience in Italy and Spain.
The white highlights on the earthy orange-brown of the faces are rendered by The- ophanes with intense sharpness and obvious diligence. These highlights imbue the por- traits with tremendous liveliness – but not with a naturalistic kind of realism. Also, the figures appear as permeated by light which softly radiates from the brownish garments.54 Therefore, for example, the Orthodox theological teaching that man is transfigured by the grace of the divine energy – which is often experienced as light, finds its visual form most fittingly in Theophanes’ frescoes.55 In this sense, we could say that Theophanes the Greek was an itinerant-theologian who theologised through painting.
His treatment of colour and his brush strokes remind us of the statement made by Manuel Philes (c.1275–1345), a Byzantine poet of the fourteenth century, who said that one of the achievements of Byzantine art was that it represented “in material form the emotions of the spirit.”56 More than five hundred years later, in his book entitled On the Spiritual in Art (1911), a major 20th century abstract painter, Vasily Kandinsky propagated precisely this role of art, with one significant difference: Kandinsky insisted that this is achieved explicitly through pure abstraction. Through such insistence, perhaps without realising, Kandinsky adhered to a certain kind of dogmatism. His work nevertheless re- mains related to the Byzantine experience and we shall discuss that relationship more extensively in a separate chapter of this book.
54 Ibid., 191.
55 We are referring here to the teaching of Hesychasm.
56 Our translation of: «τέχνη...τα της ψυχής τυπούσα ταις ύλαις πάθη.» Miller, E. Manuelis Philae Carmina. IV.
Codex Vaticanus. Ex Codicibus Escurialensibus, Florentinis, Parisinis et Vaticanis. Volumen Posterius. Parisiis, M DCCC LVII. See also: Henry Maguire, Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 91.
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