Icône du saint roi Stefan Uroš III avec des scènes de sa vie : contribution à la compréhension des conceptions littéraires et théologiques ď un zographe du XVIe siècle

Abstract

In the course of this study, by reading and explaining the inscriptions
above every represented scene, the author shows that the painter
used the hagiography, the Liturgy, and the Synaxarion of the beginning
of the 15th century, as a literary basis for the icon of the Serbian
Kralj Stefan Dečanski, which dates from 1577. The design of the icon
was based on the Synaxarion, the independant scenes on the hagiography,
while the emotional depictions in the icon may be interpreted
through the verses of the Liturgy. All three of these literary sources,
influenced the central scenes of the icon as well. The parallelisms between
the Serbian kralj and Moses of the Old Testament or the Emperor
Constantine for example, were basic elements for the creation of the
iconographie type with which the Serbian kralj was depicted, e.g. receiving
(like a new Constantine) the crown and the imperial stringer
from an angel holding a sceptre tipped with a cross, or in a battle scene
with the Bulgarians, lifting his hands towards the sky (like a new Moses)
paying more attention to prayer than to the actual battle.