Page 185 - Kosovo Metohija Heritage

Opening lines of the Third Charter of the Dečani Monastery, 1343–45, archive of the Serbian academy of Sciences and arts
also because they were at a great distance from the observer or were placed in fields where the person who had ordered them and the painter knew full well that no one would be able to see them. The act of painting was, therefore, similar to the discreetly written signatures and prayers of zoogra- phers (painters), an act of a higher order, realized for view- ing from the other side, as if the scenes were not meant only for eartly eyes: certain truths had to be stated regard- less of whether they would be understood by anyone.
The painting of frescos lasted ten years. The earliest in- scription including a year was written on one crossbeam of the northern nave, 1338/9, and the latest, over the entrance to the naos, 1347/8. But as the season for fresco-painting in the interior on still wet mortar ended usually in autumn, the work was most probably finished in September or Oc- tober of 1347.
it is difficult today to conjecture the magnitude of work in which, considering the size, only one group of master painters did not take part. Undoubtedly, firstly an order was made of the entire thematics on drawings with well measured relationships of the surface, and then the work was divided and carried out at the same time on different sides. The frescoing would usually run from east to west and from the highest, first of the spherical surfaces, down- wards. in Dečani one of the artists with his co-workers might have begun work also in the Chapel of Saint Deme- trius, where he in the inscription wrote down the name of abbot arsenije. according to a unique idea, realized in a scope which is difficult to comprehend in the manner in
Signatures of Kings Stefan Uroš III and Stefan Dušan in the Third Charter of the Dečani Monastery
Visoki Dečani
Opening lines of the Charter of Princesse Milica for Dečani Monastery, 1397,
archive of the Serbian academy of Sciences and arts
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