Паметниците на стенната живопис във Велико Търново и региона от XV до края на XVII в. в научната литература
Monuments of mural paintings in Veliko Tarnovo and the region (15th to the end of 17th c.) in scholarly literature

Summary/Abstract: The „St. George” church in Veliko Tarnovo is one of the few surviving monuments in the town from the time of the Ottoman rule over the Bulgarian lands. The devastating earthquake of 1913 caused irreparable damage to the paintings in the church. The vault was destroyed, the upper parts of the walls and almost all of the southern wall of the nave were also ruined. A substantial part of the paintings in the narthex is missing. The incompleteness of the preserved painting in the church is undoubtedly the reason why, up to now, no thorough monographic research on its history, architecture and painted decoration has been undertaken. The paintings of the church were restored at the beginning of the 70s of the 20th century. No regular archaeological excavations have, however, been carried out since, nor have data on its architecture been published to illuminate unsolved questions concerning the church. The present study aims at presenting in full the scholarly literature related to this church in Tarnovo. The review shows that the unresolved issues surrounding the construction and painted decoration of the church are, indeed, numerous. The dating of the murals in the narthex has not yet been clarified. It is necessary to verify, by a detailed stylistic analysis of the paintings in the nave, the assertion that they were painted by masters of the workshop of Pimen Zographos –the same masters who had completed, some time before, part of the painted decoration of the Slimnichki monastery. It is also necessary to explore the problem range of the iconographic program which contains a number of rare and unusual features of the post-Byzantine paintings on the Balkans. The historical data and the context in which the church was created and functioned need to be reviewed with greater attention to detail.

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