МИТЪТ „ХРИСТОС В РАКЕТА“: ПРЕОБРАЖЕНСКА МАНДОРЛА В БАЛКАНСКОТО ПОСТВИЗАНТИЙСКО ИЗКУСТВО
HITHE MYTH OF “CHRIST IN A SPACESHIP”: THE TRANSFIGURATION MANDRORLA IN BALKAN POST-BYZANTINE ART

Summary/Abstract: The study is focused on elucidation of origins of the iconographical model of the Transfiguration of Christ around which in the second half of the twentieth century in Bulgaria has been built a legend about the pictorial representation of the Lord Jesus Christ in a spaceship. Emphasis is placed on the Transfiguration fresco from the Church of St. St. Theodore Tiron and Theodore Stratilat at Dobarsko, together with several other patterns of iconographic programs of Bulgarian churches from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. It is the mural in the Dobarsko church that is the root of the ‘cosmic interpretation’ of the specific red geometricized post-Byzantine models of mandorla, which are very common in the Transfiguration iconography on the Balkans. Similar mandorlas are used in other iconographic schemes too, however the one from Dobarsko is the ‘prototype’ of the idea that Christ is represented inside a ‘space rocket’. Therefore, by proving the Athonite origins of this Transfiguration iconographic model, the present study aims to contribute to the dismantling of the imposed amateurish, and even offensive to the believers, way of interpreting the miracle of Christ's Transfiguration on Mount Tabor.

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