The present paper examines two bronze censers with Christological relief compositions from the Georgian National Museum. The analyses of their stylistic and iconographic features shed more light on the dissemination of the bronze censers produced in the East Christian artistic centers. The paper attempts to determine the time and place of creation of these liturgical objects. I...
This article deals with some groups of saints in the iconographic programs of Byzantine churches. The main criterion for their presentation is the church calendar, more specifically, the fact that they are commemorated collectively in the liturgy. This iconographic practice seems to have first come into use in the churches of Constantinople, where the collective celebration...
The paper addresses a recently discovered rock-hewn chapel in the Davitgareji Desert, which has preserved late twelfth-early thirteenth century wall paintings dominated by a cycle of St Demetrios. The cycle, which finds no parallel in Georgia, is remarkable in many regards and raises important questions as to the chronology and geographical spread of such cycles, the provenance...
The first part of the paper discusses the written testimonies about the history of the cult of the holy fathers of Sinai and Raithou at St. Catherine’s monastery and the visual representations of these saints in East Christian art. The Sinai icons in question are then analysed in two ways. First, the choice of figures of the saints in the upper registers of the icons is...
The author gives an analysis of the style of the murals in the Church of the Virgin Eleousa in Veljusa (1080-1093), pointing out the distinctive manner of the outstanding artist, similar in many ways to works produced by the previous generation, such as the frescoes in Saint Sophia in Ohrid. At the same time parallels are drawn between the Veljusa frescoes and works by...
This paper examines church decoration during the Transitional period (ca. 650-850), focusing on unpublished elements from the Fatih Camii (Hagios Stephanos?) in Zeytinbağı (Trilye). Located on the south shore of the Sea of Marmara, the church may be securely dated to the early years of the ninth century. Among the variety of decorative details uncovered during an unauthorized...
The article discusses the presence of iconographical details of Western origin in the scene of Christ’s Crucifixion in the post-Byzantine period. It focuses on the role of works by painters from the Cretan and Epirote schools in their distribution among the next generation of icon-painters. From here a detailed examination of the compositions of the Crucifixion on three monuments...
In previous research the human figures represented in the initials on fol. 26v and 120r of the Miroslav Gospel have been interpreted as personifications of the Year (Annus). However, this view can be challenged based on their iconographic characteristics, the Gospel verses that follow, the place of these verses in liturgical practice and their comparison with relevant visual...
During the course of conservation work on the wall-paintings in the Protaton Church on Mount Athos a number of letters were found that can form the name ‘Eutychios’ or ‘Eutychiou’, the name of one of the two painters who decorated the Peribleptos Church in Ohrid. This discovery has overturned the findings of previous research and also poses new questions. The answers to these...
The paper deals with the architectural sculpture of the twelfth century Church of the Holy Virgin at the Studenica Monastery. Its parallels with Italian Romanesque sculpture have long been identified in academic literature, and attention has been drawn to the influence of classical sculpture, mostly in terms of style, which has been attributed to the impact of Byzantine art. The...
The work of Felix Kanitz titled Serbiens byzantinische Monumente. Gezeichnet und beschrieben von F. Kanitz [The Byzantine Monuments of Serbia. Drawn and Described by F. Kanitz] published in German and Serbian in 1862 has never been subjected to more detailed analysis from the perspective of art history. The need for the contextualization of illustrated books and their relation to...
Under the influence of Russian and Austrian neo-Byzantinism, as well as increasingly extensive historiographic research, evocations of Byzantine architectural achievements appeared in Serbian architecture in the early 1870s. Their merging with the layers of the national schools of medieval masonry, adapted to the use of modern materials and methods of composition, stemmed from...
The paper presents extant texts narrating about St. Moses the Ethiopian or the Black written in Greek, Coptic, Ge’ez, Syrian, Arabic and Old Church Slavonic and reviews the cult of the saint connected to the Baramus Monastery in the Scetis Desert or the Nitrian Desert. His preserved images in Egypt, Palestine, Byzantium, and in the countries whose churches used various recensions...
The paper analyses late Gothic and early Renaissance imagery on the reliquary casket of Saint Tryphon kept in the Kotor Cathedral. The iconography of the torture and death scenes of the young martyr Tryphon, as well the representation of the architecture on the model of the town of Kotor in the hand of Saint Tryphon opens up the possibility of interpreting this reliquary in a...
The article analyses the occurrence of the iconography of the ruler crowned by angels in Wallachia in the mid-sixteenth century, a late revival of a Byzantine iconographic model with no examples known in Wallachia prior to this date. In the nave of the infirmary chapel of Cozia Monastery (1543), voivode Radu Paisie is depicted crowned by an angel and blessed by Saint Methodius of...
The paper discusses unknown frescoes in the narthex of the Patriarchate of Peć Monastery dating from c. 1332 and found during the conservation-restoration works undertaken in 1931. They were discovered above the younger vaults (the cycle of the Passion of Christ) and in the large arched openings on the western side of the narthex, which were walled up in the sixteenth century...
This research explores the relationship between iconographicprogrammatic innovations in altar wall paintings of post-Iconoclastic churches intended to facilitate liturgical interpretation and depictions of the Theotokos (with Christ) usually placed in the apsidal conch. The conclusion on the existence of direct semantic ties between this type of portrait and the discovery of the...
The juxtaposition of historical and architectural evidence supports the possibility of seclusion practice in the church proper. This hypothesis is valid for both the Byzantine Empire and Old Rus’. Seclusion in a church led to a higher authority and religious status of an ascetic. The structural pair of a cell and a chapel above it was introduced into a number of Middle Byzantine...
The article clarifies the dating of the earliest examples of the Novgorod Sophia iconography - a fresco of 1441 in the Novgorod Archbishop’s chamber and a double-sided icon from the Annunciation Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. A reasonable challenge to the life of this iconography is considered on the basis of its content in the context of the ecclesiastical political position...
The paper explores the semiotic meaning of relief panels from a three-light window on the northern facade of the naos of the Church of Archangel Michael and St. Gavrilo of Lesnovo at the Lesnovo Monastery (1340/1341). Iconographically derived from tombstones and objects of everyday use, their geometrical and zoomorphic decoration seems to suggest that the ktetor and his family...
The paper deals with “King’s Painter” Tevdore and his inscriptions preserved in three churches of Upper Svaneti (northwestern highland region of Georgia) dated back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The textual and visual data allow us to reconstruct the status of the painter and his impact on the embellishment of these churches. The inscriptions are considered from various...
The subject of this paper is the staurotheke which is now kept in the treasury of the Dominican monastery in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It originally belonged to the church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ras, Serbia, to which it had been donated jointly by the Serbian King Stefan Uroš II Milutin and Bishop Gregory II of Raška (Rascia). The staurotheke in the shape of a double-armed cross is...
The fairly well-preserved fresco paintings in the dome of the Church of St. George at the Dobrilovina Monastery feature some rather unusual programmatic and iconographical solutions. The depiction of the Presanctified Liturgy and the figures of some Old Testament characters represented in the drum of the dome have no known parallels in the dome programs of Post-Byzantine...
This paper explores the contents and historical context of the Cyrillic inscription written in old Serbian language with some Turkish words on the fresco “St. Nicholas takes Basil from the house of Emir” from the Church of St. Nicholas in Ramaća. Based on an analysis of the historical circumstances and events that took place at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the...
The paper presents the results of analysis of typological, stylistic- technical, epigraphic and iconographic features of the luxurious panagiarion, part of a complex reliquary, in the treasury of the Tersatto Monastery near Rijeka. The size and content of the panagiarion, made of jewels, pearls and relics in silver gilded revetments, provide basis to classify it within the group...