Калотина или Мелник? За един стенописен фрагмент от фонда на НАИМ–БАН
Kalotina or Melnik? New Evidence on a Wall-Painting Fragment from the NAIM–BAS Collection

Summary/Abstract: This paper traces the history of the wall paintings detached from the medieval church St. Nicolas in Kalotina that were transported to the National Archaeological Museum in Sofia in 1948 by the conservator Karl Yordanov. Only three of the fragments were registered in the Medieval Fund inventory book of the museum. Others were left either with no inventory numbers or were given duplicate ones and the information about the provenance of some of these wall paintings was lost as time passed. These circumstances complicate the research on St. Nicolas church and caused an accumulation of controversial or inaccurate information in the scientific literature throughout the years. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century for in-depth research to be undertaken. Georgi Gerov and Asen Kirin published a comprehensive iconographic scheme of the wall paintings in the early 90s. Around the same time, Lilyana Mavrodinova published an unknown fragment with the image of St. Peter the Apostle in a medallion. As a result, this fragment was included in a couple of international exhibitions and has since become an irrevocable part of NAIM–BAS' permanent exposition. The history of this particular fragment is important for the current study not only within the context of the Kalotina church but also because it is a telling example of the fate of a large number of wall paintings acquired by the museum in the 30s and 40s of the 20th century. The following study is based on unpublished archival materials and old photographs. They offer a solid base for research of the history of the detached wall paintings. This new evidence shows that the schemes made by Georgi Gerov and Asen Kirin have a lot of inaccuracies and omissions, related mainly to the placement of the murals at the altar. It also disproves that the fragment brought to light by Lilyana Mavrodinova is from Kalotina. Two unpublished photographs of the altar taken by Ivan Goshev in 1933 answer the questions posed in this text and allow for the iconographic scheme to be reconstructed. This paper also presents all the known wall paintings detached from the church in Kalotina and clarifies their original placement in the church. Unfortunately, the study shows that some of the wall paintings that were removed in 1948 have been destroyed after their transportation to the museum.This research also attempts to identify the origin of the fragment with the image of St. Peter the Apostle which has a clear stylistic resemblance to the murals from the medieval church St. Nicolas near Melnik. An image that was also thought to have been brought from Kalotina, supposedly depicting St. Paul, is also from Melnik. Another fragment of an unidentified female saint from the west wall of the nave that was assumed to have been brought to the museum from the demolished church St. George the Lesser in Nessebar was identified as a mural from Kalotina. The results of this study show that despite the multiple publications and years of extensive research conducted by a number of renowned authors, there are still significant gaps in the accumulated knowledge of emblematic medieval art monuments in the Bulgarian lands. This conclusion applies both to the churches St. Nicolas in Kalotina and St. Nicolas in Melnik. It is difficult to identify the reasons for the researchers’ confusion over the attribution of wall paintings which must have been painted in more than a century’s distance, and moreover in a very different cultural context. Most certainly, some of them are related to the current state of these monuments. Their condition reflects the serious defects in the country’s contemporary system of cultural heritage preservation.

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