CARTE IN LIMBA ENGLEZA
The Blueness of Divine Humanism.
Todor Mitrovic, 2024.
Colors of Christ’s Garments and Their Meaningin the History of Byzantine Art
AUTHOR
Todor Mitrović
Todor Mitrović was born in Belgrade, Serbia, 1972. He received a doctorate from the Faculty of Fine Arts (FLU) at the University of Arts in Belgrade (2015) and currently teaches the icon-painting at the Academy of Serbian Orthodox Church for Fine Arts and Conservation in Belgrade, at Bachelor's and Master's level, with the status of full professor.
He has exhibited in twelve solo exhibitions in Serbia, Romania and Germany, as well as in numerous (international) group exhibitions in Serbia and in: Athens, Bitola, Bucharest, Cambridge, Clinton MA, Düsseldorf, Helsinki, Joensuu, London, Madrid, Minsk, Moscow, New Valamo, Oslo, Paris, Perm, Reykjavik, St. Petersburg, Sofia, Stavanger, Thessaloniki, Trondheim, Veliko Tarnovo, Yaroslavl, Yekaterinburg…
He has painted (monumental) works of art in public spaces, in the domain of ecclesiastical art (on walls or iconostases), in Finland, Greece, Romania, Russia and Serbia.
Todor Mitrović writes about ancient and contemporary art in the research fields of art theory, art history (Byzantine), theology, semiotics... Before this book, he has already published two books [in Serbian]: Icon and the Body (Belgrade / Šibenik, 2022) and Fundamentals of Icon Painting (Belgrade / Hilandar Monastery, 2012; which has already been translated and published in two European languages and recently received the second Serbian edition). His numerous articles have been published in Bulgarian, English, German, Romanian, Russian, (Serbian) and Finnish – some of them in recognized academic journals with international reputation.
TAKE A LOOK
The Blueness of Divine Humanism
Very Brief Description
The Blueness of Divine Humanism deals with the specific coloristic aspects of Christ’s image in Byzantine art. The key historical change discovered, analyzed and interpreted in this book is the change of the color of Christ’s most conspicuous and most important garment from purple to blue, which happened in centuries following the iconoclastic crisis. Thus, the study reveals how one specific color, irrelevant in early Byzantine cultural context, gradually climbs up on the semantic value scale, up to the point of becoming the unquestionable designator of Christ’s visual presence in post-iconoclastic art and liturgy.
Careful contextualization of this specific pictorial invention shows the enormous richness of its semantic potential and, consequently, demonstrates that the image of Byzantine Christ changed in the most subtle yet the most radical ways throughout the Middle Ages. Namely, the very color change radically subverts the earlier conventions of Byzantine artistic language, up to the point of becoming a specific designator of Christ’s kenotic un-exclusivity on the symbolic horizon of a medieval viewer. His image changes from the powerful sovereign dressed entirely-in-purple (or gold), in Early Byzantine art, to become the power-emptied High Priest, who is dressed in garment colored by innovative blue color, which is, at the same time, appropriate to be worn in heavens and by any human being on earth. Thus, this research shows how the relations between imperial and ecclesiastical ideologies gradually changed, not only in the high level theological or courtly realms, but also in the domain of the most popular visual culture at the time. Finally, as those meaningful changes directly affected the image of Christ, which was the cornerstone of the entire Byzantine representational system, the semantic capacities of the mysterious blueness of his robe were to increase beyond political symbolism, and enrich to the point of becoming – as this study will argue – one of the most profound pictorial inventions of European (medieval) culture.
Brief Description
By analyzing one highly specific pictorial phenomenon, this book reveals aspects of Byzantine art that have not been addressed by prior research in this field. It presents yet undiscovered capacities of the color as a semantic vehicle, and demonstrates its extraordinary capacity to express the most subtle theological and social messages. More specifically, the book uncovers and thoroughly interprets the change of color of Christ’s himation (his most conspicuous and virtually most important garment), which happened in centuries following the iconoclastic crisis and radically changed the entire structure of Byzantine pictorial world.
At the very beginnings of Byzantine art, Christ was, as a rule, dressed entirely in purple, entirely in gold – or in the combination of the two – with the color of his garments conveying the strictly imperial spectrum of meaning. Moreover, if we examine the depictions of his figure in different iconographic or programmatic contexts, distinctive of this early developmental phase, it is the color(s) and not the form of his garment – nor any other pictorial aspect of his figure – that represents the only permanent semantic connection with the traditionally imperial symbolic networks. In the post-iconoclastic period, the color of Christ’s himation gradually changed, representing an obvious tendency towards radical change in correlation between his image and the imperial spectrum of meaning. Unless He was represented in His brilliant, enlightened white (or golden) garments in theophanic scenes, such as the Transfiguration and the Ascension, Christ was, after the tenth century – almost invariably – clad in himation colored in blue. During the centuries that followed, the semantic change generated by the color change was going to become so radical that the idea of the exclusivity (of the sovereign) was to be subverted by its theological opposite. The new set of colors of Christ’s garments would not be the sign of his uplifted, exclusive social status, but the sign of his closeness to the world of humans. Even more peculiarly, although the presence of the precious lapis lazuli evidently added specific exclusive heavenly prerogatives to the new color – which are connected to the presence of this stone in Old Testament visions of Divine/heavenly glory – this kind of preciousness will never become the designator of Christ’s exclusive status, the way it happened with purple. On the contrary, the artistic phenomena researched in this book will demonstrate that this new kind of heavenly preciousness could belong to (literally) any person depicted on Byzantine images – regardless of his/her status within the wider theological/ecclesiastical framework. In poetic terms, the uplifting of humanity to heavens was followed by down-lifting of heavens to the earth. Or, in theological and political terms, what once was the ultimate designator of Christ’s elevation and distance from the world of ordinary humans – the colors of his garments – conversely becomes the designator of his deepest proximity to this world.
Over its ten chapters, this book discovers – step by step – specific pictorial and contextual changes that have sparked, inspired and fostered this fundamental semantic conversion. Thus, after being discussed from different synchronic and diachronic perspectives, the blueness of Christ’s himation – the ‘Christological blueness’, as I named it here – shows to be the enormously rich, semantically multilayered symbolic device, capable to attach and intersect wide spectra of meaning to the figure of Christ. Consequently, it becomes one of the most meaningful keys to understanding Christ’s (visual) presence within the Byzantine cultural horizon.
Detailed Description – Table of Contents with Chapter Descriptions
The Blueness of Divine Humanism is consisted of ten chapters, with the following titles:
1. World without Blue: The Glory of Purple and Gold
2. Clothing the Blue over the Purple
3. The Blue of the Un-exclusivity
4. Blues of Un-Knowing
5. Anatomy of the Unknowing: Blue of the Form Loss
6. The Blue of the New Kingdom
7. Blues of Power-emptied and Self-given Lord
8. Priestly Blue: The Mark of Saint Mark
9. The High-Priestly Blue
10. The Blue of the (Self) Sacrifice
LECTURA PLACUTA!
CONTINUA CUMPARATURILE IN: