Vojvodić Dragan. Medieval Wall Paintings in the Churches and Monasteries of Raška I: Saint Peter's Church and Djurdjevi Stupovi in Ras

The Institute of Art History Faculty of Philosophy: University of Belgrade, 2024. — 240 p.In the early stages of the development of Serbian culture, Raška (Rascia) had a prominent and often leading role among the territories inhabited by Serbs. In the 9th and 10th centuries, this region, which at the time housed the nucleus of Serbian political life, began to bring forth monuments that would have lasting significance for the evolution of national art and without which its genesis would be very difficult to understand. After a hiatus and a period when Zahumlje (Zachlumia) and Zeta took over the leading role, the political center of the Serbian lands once again shifted northward in the first half of the 12th century, permanently anchoring itself in the Raška region. Developing under the Nemanjić dynasty, the Serbian state – whose rulers lived in the fortified capital of Ras and which had reincorporated parts of the regions of Neretljani, Zahumlje, Konavle, Travunia, and Diokleia and expanded its territory at Byzantium’s expense – began a distinct cultural rise. From the second half of the 12th and throughout the 13th century, Raška saw the construction of religious monuments whose architecture, sculpture, and wall paintings would decisively influence the building and emerging identity profile of Serbian medieval culture in an area much broader than Raška itself.
It was then that the distinctive solution of the church emerged: a single-nave (aisleless) building ith a dome-topped central bay with lateral vestibules and façades with Romanesque secondary sculpture, later elaborated by transforming the vestibules into rectangular choir spaces and adding lateral parekklesia along the narthex, and its interior ennobled by Byzantine-style wall paintings. Those frescoes were the works of first-class Byzantine painters accompanied by Serbian zografoi, and their thematic program, like the architecture of those churches, was shaped to serve the needs of the milieu for which they were created. In this process, the formulation of the distinctive ideology of the Serbian state and church had a remarkable impact. It rested on the notion of the saint-bearing ruling dynasty and the holiness of the autocephalous church, explained in both literature and the visual arts. The 13th century brought the writing of literary and liturgical texts and the painting of distinctive thematic fresco programs intended for the glorification of the Nemanjić dynasty as the leader of New Israel and for explaining the apostolic underpinnings and justifiability of founding an autocephalous national church. The legacy of those artworks would decisively shape later Serbian art and the idea of Serbian national identity, remaining influential until modern times. It would long serve as the framework and impetus for artistic projects in Raška, where notable works of monumental painting continued to be produced even in the 14th and 15th centuries, when the hubs of state political life were on the other territories.