Artistic activity and the struggle for survival of the Serbian church during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Serbian Church
had a decisive influence on contemporary artistic activity. In order to
enhance its role, the Church stimulated the construction, painting and
decoration of churches. In the iconographie programme of the wall
paintings and icons of the time importance was accorded to the figures
of national saints and to the scenes from their lives (St. Sava of Serbia,
Simeon of Serbia, Stefan Dečanski). New subjects or iconographie
innovations were avoided even when they came from Greece and
Russia. In terms of style, the sixteenth and seventeenth century
paintings imitate those from the early decades of the fourteenth
century. This pronounced conservatism in the iconographie and stylistic
respects was fostered by the Serbian Church wrhich considered traditional
forms a means of resisting the Islamization and conversion to
Catholicism of the Serbian people.