Od horizontalne ka vertikalnoj genealoškoj slici Nemanjića
From the Horizontal to the Vertical Genealogical Image of the Nemanjić Dynasty

Summary/Abstract: Sometime in the XIV century, towards the end of the second or beginning of the third decade, the “horizontal genealogical image” of the Serbian rulers gave way to a new depiction of their genealogy. We find the earliest, surviving Nemanjic family tree, painted in a vertically arranged composition, in the narthex of Gracanica, followed by those in Pec, Decani, Mateic and Studenica. The appearance of the new type of image presenting the Serbian dynastic genealogy was, on the one hand, due to the problems caused by the ever lengthening series of rulers' portraits. They led to the deformation of the thematic programmes and did not correspond to the dynamic spirit of “Palaeologan renaissance” art. On the other hand, from the mid-XIII century, there was a obvious intention to link the idea of a “chosen people” and the genealogy of Christ with the Nemanjic dynasty. This process unfolded simultaneously in literature, royal charters and visual art. It was facilitated by the fact that presentations of Christ's genealogy — the Tree of Jesse — were introduced in the programmes of Serbian churches from the second half of the XIII century. A correspondence had already been established between the presentations of Christ's genealogy and the portraits of the Nemanjic family included in the broader thematic ensembles inspired by dynastic ideology, in Sopocani and, subsequently, in Moraca, Arilje and the King's Church in Studenica. Even in the description of the family tree of the Serbian dynasty itself, the notions of “pious lineage”, “the holy root”, “the branch of good fruit”, “the blessed shoots” etc. were used in the written sources. In this way, a process gradually matured along the path towards creating a dynastic picture of the house of Nemanji} that was iconographically coordinated to the Tree of Jesse.

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