Archaeoastronomy and Ancient Technologies 2020, 8(2), 41-54
Personification of the Sun, the Moon and the planets in fourteenth century Serbian iconography
Van de moortel-Ilic, D.
Full Summer school programm coordinator, Oxford; E-mail: dragana.vandemoortel@gmail.com
Abstract
This paper investigates the celestial-religious images in fourteenth century Serbian Christian Orthodox iconography, painted in the Byzantine style. The focus of this research is on the fresco of the Sun, the Moon, the planets and the Zodiac, from the Lesnovo monastery, now situated in North Macedonia. While the monasticism view and official church refuse to accept that the fresco presents the Zodiac signs and the planets, in the academic world there are detailed explanations of the visual details of this fresco but no explanation as to why the Zodiac is painted there. The other subject of this research is the Visoki Decani monastery in Kosovo, with a specific focus on the images of the Sun and the Moon in the fresco entitled, The Crucifixion of Christ. This paper concentrates on possible explanations as to why these figures, the Zodiac and the planets were painted and what they could possibly represent. The conclusion is that these celestial images are a product of a synergy between the Hellenistic and the Christian cosmology.
Keywords: Zodiac, personified planets, medieval iconography, archaeoastronomy, Psalm 148, Byzantine style, Visoki Decani, Bogorodica Ljeviska, Lesnovo, Serbia
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