The Age of Light – 13th Century Serbian Art

"There was a time when the best painters in the civilised world were found among the Serbs. That was during the decades of the mid-13^th century, when the son and grandsons of Nemanja sat on the throne. How was it that Serbia, for a brief period in its history, found itself at the forefront of creative art in Europe?" (Prof. Vojislav Djurić)

By Dragana Tasić

For the past two years (2006–2008), Serbia’s institutions of art and culture have been marking an important national anniversary: "The 800^th Anniversary of the Žiča Monastery" — the first Serbian Archbishopric, the coronation venue and the Serbian catholic temple. After visiting Kraljevo, Novi Sad and Leskovac, the remarkable exhibition The Age of Light — light being a symbol of the great art of the Raška School in Serbia and the symbol of Byzantine aesthetics — has arrived in Belgrade. Organised by the national Museum of Kraljevo and the gallery of the Serbian Arts and Sciences Academy, the exhibition was opened in late February to numerous visitors who like history, science and art.

According to exhibition curators Suzana Novčić and Tatjana Mihailović, the name Age of Light symbolises a time of naissance of invaluable 13^thcentury Serbian art as well as Byzantine aesthetics as a whole. The governing idea was to "show the emergence of the Žiča Monastery in the context of the age when this great art, known as the Raška School, appeared and evolved.

"That age assigned to the Serbian territory and its 13^th-century artists a leading position", sets out renowned Byzantologist and Serbian medieval art historian Professor Vojislav Djurić, wondering "why the greatest master painters, joined by talented builders and sculptors, emerged on the banks of the Mileševka River, in the gorges of the Morača River, at the source of the Raška River and on the clearings above the Ibar River?"

The History Museum in Belgrade has assisted in setting up a display of the Žiča Monastery design and drawings of paintings made by the two great 19^th-century researchers Mihailo Valtrović and Dragutin Milutinović. They were among the first to tour the area and leave valuable documents of more than 40 monuments. In this way, they also snatched from certain oblivion many that are no longer extant.

The Žiča Monastery anniversary also provided an opportunity for the National Museum of Kraljevo to display a rich collection of fresco copies – 13^th-century details or fresco ensembles – from other monasteries such as Studenica, Žiča, Sopoćani, Arilje, St. Apostles in Peć, Morača, Gradac, Mileševa. The precious collection of copies was made in the 1960s in collaboration with the Fresco Gallery in Belgrade. They are the work of renowned restorers and curators, painters-copyists Zdenka and Branislav Živković, Danica and Miodrag Mladenović, Dragomir Jašović, Aleksandar Tomašević... A superb professionalism and subtle aptitude for discerning the old masters’ palette, they made some 50 odd copies of these jewels of Serbian and world art heritage. These works, displayed at the recent exhibition, successfully related the story of the "age of light". Apart from frescoes, the project also included casts of wall decoration at Studenica Monastery, copies of medieval manuscripts, and scale models of monasteries and their maps, as well as slides depicting the best known works of medieval art.

The exhibition’s rarities included fragments of original paintings from the Žiča Monastery, shown in public for the first time. In the course of archaeological research at the Žiča Monastery (1988–1991), the remains of "buried" frescoes were discovered from the earliest layers of wall painting that fell from the Church of Holy Salvation during a 14^th-century Cuman invasion. Several hundred fragments of fresco layers were displayed on fine sand or loose earth, together with sections of stone plastics, vessels used by painters and other damaged objects that have reached us after many centuries. Although reduced to small pieces, these fragments testify to the exquisiteness and beauty of the 13^th-century Serbian art palette. In this context, the exhibit included basic natural minerals (hematite, cinnabar, malachite, lazurite, azurite, limonite) used in the Middle Ages to obtain topquality pigments for painting.

Apart from the famous sculptural stone decoration of the Studenica Monastery, smaller parts of the original that were found during archaeological research of Nemanja’s endowment were also shown. Exclusive items in the collection include seven tools for polishing marble that were found in the very Church of the Mother of God. In a special showcase was one of the few copies of the famed gold ring of King Stefan the First-Crowned (12^th-13^th century), which is kept in the Studenica Monastery treasury.

The captions, in particular, contribute to the quality and coherence of the exhibition because they represent excerpts from the works of prominent Byzantologists, researchers of Serbian medieval art, scientists, university professors and academicians of several generations: Svetozar Radojčić, Vojislav Djurić, Gordana Babić.

The exhibition’s concept is supplemented by two films: one devoted to the work of the renowned fresco painting school at the Žiča Monastery, while the other represents a conversation with Zdenka Živković, who has devoted her whole career to preserving, protecting and copying Serbian medieval frescoes.

After Belgrade, The Age of Light exhibition will continue on its way to other cities in Serbia – Čačak, Kruševac, Loznica... and ultimately end as a permanent exhibition at the Kraljevo Museum.