The rulers of medieval Serbia had as a familiar feature the combination of chivalry (I mean they were knights, heavily armed warriors, brave) with holiness (they went to church, started the service of the king with a PRAYER, participated in the Holy Eucharist and even built many churches and monasteries that decorated them with the best iconography of the time). The ICONOGRAPHER Bishop MAXIM, expressing this tradition, began to illustrate portraits of these kings. The specific portrait of the ruler bearing the family name of the Decani monastery projects together with the royal decorations of his uniform and the expressiveness of his eyes. According to historians’ testimonies, Stephen was a powerful king but also a merciful one. He could listen to the grievances of his subjects and judge with leniency. The illustrator presents this very side of the Saint to us very convincingly. It would be as if he had the Saint come out through a mesh of heavy garments of great luxury as a gentle HUMBLE figure who looks at us with love as if to say: “Don’t see all these things that I wear. In essence, we are brothers as children of the Lord, and when we meet in the Kingdom of God, you will see that you all are equal!”
We notice that here Bishop Maxim creates his own particular visual identity, which preserves its Byzantine iconographic roots but introduces something new: the expression of the loving relationship with the pious observer of the icon. Perhaps now we do not understand in depth that a vital promotion of iconography is taking place in our days. But we believe that the historian of the future will indeed mark it one day as the progress of a painting with a history of centuries, which both in the past and in the present does not stand still but has in store for us rare and welcome surprises.
Fr. Stamatis Skliris
