O svetosavskoj redakciji likova svetih monaha u priprati mileševske crkve
On St Sava’s Imprint on Conception of Holy Monks Images in Mileševa Church Narthex

Summary/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. Furthermore, according to the faded traces of previous iconographic characteristics of these figures, it could be seen that they constituted a compact and specific group with regard to the nearest images or groups of images, related to them by belonging to the same, more general category of saints. Bearing in mind the damage to heads and faces, as well as the disappearance of the inscriptions with the names and texts on the scrolls in their hands, the only way to discovering, or at least to closer determining the identity of the images presented was by means of to date unused circumstantial data, which could be provided by more extensive iconographic materials from the other monuments of the time. This way was, up to a certain extent, already open by previous numerous notes of the researchers on the essential closeness of solutions in Mileševa with those of Studenica and Žiča, that is to say by a series of relevant findings indicative of Saint Sava’s conception of its painting program. With the newly recorded analogies, and considered for the first time in this context, discovered by the author of this text in the painting programs of other representative foundations of the Nemanjićs from the 13th century, the circumstances are now present which will diminish, if not eliminate, the uncertainties related to the identity of the said monks, and also, to the extent possible today, shed light on the problem spot in the Mileševa narthex program...

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