On St Sava’s (Svetosavski) Redaction of Holy Monks Images in Mileševa Church's Narthex: Contribution to Research in Iconographic Common Places in the Nemanjićs’ Church Foundation

Abstract

This paper discusses the possibility of further completing the to-date analyses on the content and scope of the part of the painting program in the Mileševa narthex, representing a striking two-band frieze of the images of holy monks. This new examination does not ignore the already recognized distinguishing marks, and pays special attention to investigating possible relationships and links with the solutions in some other monuments of the same era not having been previously researched in detail. The undertaking of the author was in this case determined by an attempt to look into and throw some light onto the hardly discernible, and to date unexplained, original content of a smaller, only fragmentarily saved, and indeed the most challenging segment of that numerous and complex gathering of the images of holy monks. That segment included several extremely damaged and rather faded images of holy monks in the lower zone of the narthex southern wall (the band of standing figures), and the figure in the southern end of the adjoining, west wall, in all probability, belonged to it as well.