Re-prezentacije Crnogoraca Teodora Valerioa
Re-presentations of Montenegrins by Théodore Valério

Summary/Abstract: Special attention was given to the presentations Famille monténégrine pleurant ses morts après un combat à l’entrée du monastère de Cettigne, Les Monténégrins se rendant au marché de Kotor and Le prêtre monténégrin en uniforme de combat, portant le drapeau de l’eglisé, createdduring the seventh decade of 19th century by the French artist Théodore Valério. Valério’s drawings and copper etchings modeled after them, as wellas aquarelles, paintings on canvas and illustrations published in popular European magazines, display Montenegrins in a truthful manner, but also in accordance with concepts shaped within the Orientalist discourse. This is why it is emphasised that these presentations must be perceived as constructions unifying the documentary precision and imagination of the Western European understanding of the so called Orient. The analysed presentations,said in the language of contemporary literary and visual theories, are representations,i.e. representations expressing a complex relation between the observed and the observer, the connection between the truthful, the presented and what is expected from the presented. Within such a methodological framework, this text strives to answer the question asked already in 1940 by a professor and once the Director of the Historical Institute of Montenegro, Andrija Lainović: did Valério really see what he presented or are these “exotic”curiosities?

• Details
• Contents