“Tota depicta picturis grecis”  The style and iconography of religious painting in Late Medieval Cattaro (Montenegro)
Creators: name: Živković, Valentina
Publisher: name: eum
Year: 2013

description: Kotor (Cattaro), a coastal town at the far end of Bocca di Cattaro in contemporary Montenegro, has an exceptionally rich cultural, political and religious history. The town’s long municipal tradition set urban life and institutions on a course of evolution which it continued to follow during the Middle Ages. Two sovereign powers, Serbia and Venice, ruled the longest and left the strongest marks on the town and its surroundings. Serbian rule lasted from 1185 until 1371, while the Venetian Republic reigned from 1420 until 1797. 
This paper will take into account the special conditions for establishing, acceptance, duration and cessation of the painting manner in late medieval Kotor, called pictura graeca, special both in form (style) and contents (iconography). The intention is to place the continuity of pictura graeca within a cultural, religious, economic, political and social context.  The emergence of Greek masters and the development of the personal art forms which they cultivated took place at the time when Kotor was prosperous and when it held the privileged role of a coastal trade and diplomatic hub within the framework of the medieval Serbian state under the rule of the Nemanjić dynasty. Along with Dubrovnik (Ragusa), Kotor was the most important trade intermediary between Italy, the eastern Adriatic coast and the interior of Serbia. The decline and finally, the termination of the local painting production began from the time when Kotor became a part of the Venetian Republic. Its submission to Venetian suzerainty put an end to its role as a trade intermediary on which its prosperity depended, degrading it to a port which aimed to serve the economic interests of the Vene­tian Republic, as Venice considered Kotor to be antemurale of Dalmatia. From then on, the imported works of the Venetian High Renaissance and Mannerism came to prevail. 
The iconographical and stylistic traits of Kotor’s pictura graeca can be seen primarily in the fresco decoration of the four town churches of the 14th and 15th centuries: the Cathedral of St Tryphon, St Mary’s Collegiate Church, St Michael’s and St Anne’s Church. The iconographic programs of the mentioned churches testify of some of the topics which prevailed in the late medieval religious practice. We can separate the following: eucharistic, eschatological and funerary symbolism within which specially developed were the topics linked with the Crucifixion, Imitatio Christi, caritas, as well as the developing of the cult of the saint as relevant for the local community. 
A distinctive feature of Kotor art in that period is an absence of clear-cut boundaries between styles. Namely, the Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance styles produced a variety of combinations. The method employed in exploring and interpreting the advance in religiosity and art has also proved to be productive in the stylistic analysis of religious art. Namely, its starting point is the identification of the role which the cultural, political, social and economic circumstances played in the forming and adopting of artistic styles.
description: Il Capitale culturale. Studies on the value of cultural heritage, No 10 (2014): Periferie. Dinamiche economiche territoriali e produzione artistica