Живописта на Атон през призмата на новите научни изследвания. Pазмисли
Painting on Mount Athos in the Light of the New Research. Thoughts

Summary/Abstract: Much research has been done in the last decades on this topic in the context of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art. This art persistently rejects the Renaissance achievements in geometric perspective, depicting unnaturally elongated figures and ascetic faces that seem to be suspended on the golden background and avoiding any resemblance to a photographic depiction of reality. In this paper E. moutafov tries to draw a general conclusion from the evolution of the religious painting on mount Athos by presenting the most important achievements of the other researchers about illuminated manuscripts, mural paintings and icon production. By analyzing the already published data the author concludes that Athos appear as the most serious “consumer” of Christian art during the late medieval and Ottoman periods. Anyway, he observes that the earliest and the latest periods of the history of art on Athos are the less versed in scholarship at that moment, because of the lack of systematic archeological excavations in order to reconstruct the Athonite life from eighth and ninth centuries, and because of the huge number of religious monuments dating from 11th to the beginning of the 12th c. they are not collected in catalogues and published. Until now as regards to the genre separation of the painting, as best interpreted appear the illustrated manuscripts on Athos, because they are approachable as a number. Recently most of the wall-paintings from the Athonite churches were published, but it is must to examine, systematize and analyze the 19th c. wall-painting tradition. most work has to be done for the icon opulence on Athos and especially for the Post-Byzantine period one and again mostly for the production of icons created a century ago. This paper gives a proof for a lack of a local Athonite tradition in painting of any media and for a lack of a common style there as well. One can say and write a lot about the art on mount Athos, but probably nothing about the Athonite art, because of the absence of real and strong local workshops. In adden-dum to this conclusion the author criticize the overestimated part of mount Athos for the development of the Orthodox art on the Balkans. In detail he discusses the connections between present day Bulgaria and the Athonite monasteries, trying to revise some scholarly looking legends i.e. about icon-painters who studied painting on Athos, etc.

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