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a constant meaning, sometimes these formulas could be subject to substantial changes introducing
new ideas into traditional schemes. Though the transformations in question were characteristic
mainly for the Late Medieval or Early Modern period, especially for the Russian visual milieu, their
first examples appeared much earlier, that is in the Middle Byzantine era.
The first group of these compositions covers the images of saints as church
ktetors
. These
pictures are rather often based on historical facts such as the fact of construction of the church
or donation of the icon by a certain person who later was acknowledged as a saint. Such images
can be found in Post-Byzantine Greece and in the Balkans where they coexist with “normal”
donor imagery. In Late Medieval Russia they became more widespread while the life-time donor
images ceased to be produced. Alongside with such images of Russian saints another type of their
depictions imitated the iconography of votive and tomb compositions with donor in prayer. Having
substituted the donors, the praying saints would turn in mediators and intercessors for the faithful
and witnessed appearance of holy persons of the highest rank or communicated with them at the
limitary zone between heavens and earth. It seems rather significant under these circumstances
that sometimes such symbolic compositions would obtain a secondary and literal interpretation as
images of specific historical events like vision or apparition of the Virgin before the saint. The cases
of such misreading or rereading of ancient formulas can be found not only in Russia but in Post-
Byzantine world as well.
The images just discussed were in fact retrospective portraits of the real founders, sometimes
based on their lifetime depictions. Being used as icons, they proclaimed the saintly founders’ role as
protectors of their churches and monasteries. A very similar idea was basic for images of the second
group which can be qualified as “pseudo-donor portrait” of a holy person who holds a church
although he has never built or founded it. Usually such compositions feature a church dedicated to
the saint in question (like some 12
th
c. Russian images of holy princes Boris and Gleb), a city guarded
by the saint (images of St Nicholas of Mozhaisk), or the edifice standing for Ecumenical Church
(apostles Peter and Paul). All these variants with their local or universal meaning can be of different
origin which needs investigation, and possibly should be compared with Western iconographical
tradition. However, together with images of real saintly donors they demonstrate flexibility and
ambiguity of Byzantine donor iconography, as well as specific features of local traditions, and allow
to explore the ways of interpreting the donor imagery by Medieval or Late Medieval audience.
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