Ведуте Захарије Орфелина и борба за православни идентитет Срба у Угарској у XVIII веку
Zaharija Orfelins’ Vedute and the Struggle for the Orthodox Identity of the Serbs in Hungary in the 18th Century

Summary/Abstract: Zaharija Orfelin (1726–1785), a Serbian writer, intellectual, publisher, and artist, produced several engravings of Serbian churches and monasteries during his fruitful career. These vedutes responded to the religious needs of the Serbs in the Metropolitanate of Karlovci in the 18th century. As a person familiar with the political currents in Hungary, he knew very well the official policy of the metropolitans of Karlovci. The vedutes had a clearly expressed iconography that Orfelin consistently applied, combining perspective depictions of sacred spaces with representations of Serbian saints. Among them, national saints certainly had the advantage, first of all, Saint Simeon and Saint Sava, but also the despots Branković from Syrmium, whose cults were deeply rooted among the population. The popularity of some images, as well as the potential earnings that he expected from prints, determined the quality level and the number of offprints. Today preserved weaker offprints show that the demand for specific images was very high and that Orfelin's copperplate matrix was used to the limit. Those compositions conceptually fit into the religious and political program developed in the Metropolitanate of Karlovci to preserve the Orthodox identity of the Serbian people against the onslaught of the proselytizing policy of the Roman Catholic Church. Based on the patriotic ideas of Baroque culture, they reflected the aspiration towards creating and respecting sacred spaces as a pledge of the survival of Orthodox Serbs in Hungary. Orfelin's works represented an important visual segment of the struggle to preserve the Orthodox identity of the Serbian people during the 18th and 19th centuries.

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