International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Oliver M. Tomić
Filološko-umetnički fakultet, Kragujevac, Serbia; 
[e-mail]
About the Dating of Sopoćani, Its Painters and Purpose
For more than half a century the dating in 1263-1268 of the wall paintings in the nave and the 
narthex of the church of Holy Trinity in Sopoćani monastery has been widely accepted, with the 
exception of several scholars, who chose a slightly later period between 1272 and 1276. The results of 
our investigation led to the conclusion that the latter (and later) date was more accurate, and allowed 
us to precise the time of the execution of those frescoes in 1275-1277. Such a conclusion was based 
on a careful examination of the historical portraits, both royal and ecclesiastical, in the nave and in 

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the narthex. Among the criteria which encouraged us to correct the preivous and usual dating one 
should mention the appearance of the archbishop Sava II as a member of the Officiating Bishops 
in the main apse, where he couldn’t have been included as an actual prelate and a living person. 
Therefore, terminus ante quem non was pushed further up to 1272. Moreover, the investigation of 
the donor’s representation was concentrated on the queston: why and when had it been repainted 
(without obvious reason)? This study analyzes several possibilities of the orignial content, among 
which the most likely lead to the year 1277 for this very scene, as well as 1275 and 1276 for the nave 
and the narthex, respectively. It also demonstrates that the stature of the young princes Dragutin 
and Milutin as a criterion for establishing their actual age is unreliable, and therefore worthless for 
the dating of the wall paintings in Sopoćani.
The new dating of the frescoes allowed us to reconsider the relations of Sopoćani with the 
contemporary monuments in Serbia, namely their stylistical and iconographical similarities. With 
the newly proposed years of 1275-1276 for Sopoćani, the chronological gap between the wall 
paintings in several churches is drasticaly dimninished or even disappears altogether. That leads 
to the conclusion that Sopoćani, Gradac, Saint Peter in Bogdašić and the narthex in Morača were 
all decorated in continuity, in only three years. Based on that, it is natural to assume that the same 
workshop of painters executed the frescoes in all of them, although with some alterations during 
those several seasons. Obviously, the workshop came from Constantinople, as had been previously 
supposed and unanimously accepted.
Analyzing both the programme and the iconography of the frescoes in Sopoćani, especially 
in its narthex, former scholars observed that they showed all the features of a bishopric church. But 
the lack of any historical evidence supporting this hypothesis, thwarted any further investigation. 
However, the new dating in 1275-76, combined with historical events of those years (Union of 
Lyons in 1274), gives the old assumption a new life. It seems that the great crisis and tension caused 
by the Union set the mind of king Uroš, who then decided to decorate such a temple in which the 
ideas of truly orthodox church and a holy and faithful lineage should have clearly expressed itself. 
For those reasons Sopoćani were very likely meant to become the new center of the Serbian church 
and the see for its archbishop Joanikije, probably the ideator of the programme of its decoration. 
But that project was never realized, because king Uroš was owerthrown by his son and his friend 
Joanikije has retired as soon as the frescoes were finished.