International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

particularly the votive offerings (
priklad
) – precious objects from actual use or specially made in 
imitation of them and attached to the icons. The “
kolty
” from the 1822 hoard may have been attached 
to the richly adorned and quite extensive crown of a venerated icon of the Mother of God belonging 
to the principality of Ryazan’. Unfortunately, no information about it survives.
Bojana Stevanović
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy, Institute for Art History, Belgrade, Serbia; 
[e-mail]
Serbian Medieval Painting as a Source for the Crescent Earrings
The topic of this essay is the depictions of crescent earrings in Serbian medieval painting. 
The half-moon shaped earrings, often defined by experts as crescent earrings, primarily represent 
a part of the Byzantine cultural heritage in South Eastern Europe. In order to construct a link with 
the relevant archaeological finds, the representations of the crescent earrings in Serbian medieval 
painting, i.e. in those scenes where earrings are depicted, will be analyzed. Furthermore, the essay 
provides a comparative analysis of lunular earrings recurrence in the neighbouring Bulgarian and 
Greek medieval painting.
As far as Serbian thirteen-century wall painting is concerned, earrings are exclusively depicted 
as a part of female monarchs’ portraiture. They became more recurrent in representations of female 
characters from the Old Testament, as well as in portraits of female aristocracy and royalty. They 
adorn the frescos depicting the Nativity scene, the life of the Virgin (the earrings are sometimes 
worn by women bathing infant Christ and those offering gifts to St. Anne), the Baptism of Christ, 
the Marriage at Cana, as well as the scenes representing women as personifications or actual female 
characters. Representations of earrings can also be found in fresco paintings of Holy women, although 
in Serbian thirteen-century frescoes there are no representations of them. They start to occur in the 
second decade of the fourteenth century on frescoes in the churches built by aristocracy, clergy and 
members of Nemanjić dynasty. Figurative representations of Holy women can be found on the walls 
of pious endowments throughout Moravian Serbia. Furthermore, earrings adorn representations of 
Holy women in the iconography of female members of nobility and royalty. Since details such as 
clothing, jewelry and insignia on medieval representations of Holy women bear certain similarities 
to the contemporary historical portraiture, the attention must be paid to this phenomenon as well.
It is notable that several types of earrings, found in treasuries of Serbian medieval aristocracy 
in the Republic of Dubrovnik, correspond to fresco wall paintings of female members of middle 
and high-ranking aristocracy of the period. From the mid-fourteenth century onwards, earrings 
were common jewelry, eagerly worn by medieval female monarchs, noblewomen and gentry 
alike. Consequently, the archaeological finds indicate that, although the fourteen-century female 

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portraiture does not adhere to representational realism, painters did tend to depict jewelry, adorning 
the women, in a realistic manner. Furthermore, the jewelry of the period has a dual purpose – 
it adorns women, but it also indicates their financial status. This essay will not provide only the 
overview of the representations of crescent earrings in the wall painting, but will also map the 
relevant chronology. The frequency of the representations of this type of earrings in the fourteen-
century fresco painting indicates that they were in common use during the period. However, the 
number of relevant archeological finds does not support this claim. Relative rarity of crescent 
earrings, which can be traced to the same period, indicates they were passed on as an inheritance 
(for e.g. the will of Jelena Balšić contains the description of the crescent earrings along with the list 
of individuals who were to inherit them).