Ивановските стенописи и техният дарител
The Ivanovo Murals and Their Donor

Summary/Abstract: The article is dedicated to one of the most remarkable monuments of medieval Bulgarian art – the murals in the rock-hewn church at Ivanovo, Rousse region, which was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List back in 1979. The author criticizes the notion prevalent in science, according to which they were created under the influence of Byzantine art and followed the traditions and style of Palaiologan art from the beginning of the 14th century. This idea was first brought to light by the famous French Byzantologist Gabriel Millet who visited this work of art in 1935. After this visit Millet said that in his opinion Tsar Ivan Alexander was the ktetor of the church. In support of this statement he referred to a large composition studied by him, featuring the founder of the church, “his wife” and the Blessed Virgin “to whom Tsar Ivan Alexander gives his donation – the church”, as well as the inscription around this composition, which he deciphered as “John, with XA underneath”. Subsequently, this thesis was developed in detail by Nikola Mavrodinov in his Old Bulgarian Art (1946). The author of the present study offers a new interpretation of these issues. Reference to additional photos allows him to claim that the inscription to the depiction of the founder was made on both sides of the nimbus: “John” to the left, “Assen” to the right, with “in the name of God” being decipherable under the first name even now, while the rest of the title - “tsar and autocrat of all Bulgarians and Greeks” – was probably written under the second name. He has quite a few arguments to refute the interpretation of the donor composition provided by Millet and Mavrodinov. The composition is actually a triumphant depiction of the founder of the church – Tsar Ivan Assen II – surrounded by his advocates, the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist, who is not only the patron saint of this Bulgarian ruler but is also the patron on the church in Ivanovo. In support of the assertion that Ivan Assen II was the founder of the church, the author also refers to the 14th century vita of Patriarch Joachim, according to which the Bulgarian ruler visited the future patriarch at his monastery by Krassen (near Ivanovo) and “gave a lot of gold for the hewing of the church and its decoration”. This assertion can pertain only to the church with the murals as it is the only one in the monastery complex which is not a natural cave but was carved in the rocks. The palaeographic study of the inscriptions in the church at Ivanovo also unequivocally refers them to the second third of the 13th century, closely connecting them not only to the Bulgarian artistic and literary monuments of that time, but also to the Serbian church art of that age such as the murals in the church of the Holy Apostles in Pec, the churches in Mileseva and Moraca, some of which were painted by calligraphers from the same atelier that made the murals at Ivanovo.

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