Onufrienko, Maksim Olegovich. St. George Church in Mlado Nagoričane: The artistic context of the frescoes

Onufrienko, Maksim Olegovich — Research Assistant, Scientific Research Institute of Theory and History of Architecture and Urban Planning, Moscow, Russia, Orc ID 0000-0003-4756-83095, Scopus ID 57220954526, SPIN-code 8197-0762, Author ID 1063414; e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The research was prepared with the financial support of Russian Science Foundation, grant no. 20-18-00294 (Artistic Traditions, Church and State Ideology in Medieval Art and Architecture of the Balkans: The Macedonian Issue), at the Research Institute for Theory and History of Architecture and Urban Planning, branch of the Central Research and Project Institute of the Construction Ministry of Russia (Moscow).

The frescoes of the St. George Church in Mlado Nagoričino (North Macedonia) have repeatedly attracted the scholars’ attention, but so far the circle of monuments close to these paintings has not been accurately identified. The article deals with attribution a number of preserved images to certain workshops whose works are known from other ensembles. There are three different styles in the painting, which can be attributed to three different painters (or a group of painters). Apparently, the same artists who painted the church of the Slimnitsa monastery worked in the naos. This conclusion is consistent with the observation of Macedonian researchers. The other two styles apparently belong to Greek painters who can be associated with the artist Michael of Linotopi. He worked in the first third of the 17th century and painted many churches in the Balkans. One of the closest analogs of the St. George Church painting in Mlado Nagoričino are the frescoes of the Dormition Church in Zervat (Albania) and the katholikon of the Makryaleksi monastery (Greece), where Michael worked. Both the similarity of the handwriting of the inscriptions and the proximity of the physiognomic features of the some saints’ faces pointed that way. However, the style of these frescoes does not exactly match the painting of St. George’s Church. Since the analogs given in the article are rather approximate, the frescoes of the St. George church in Mlado Nagoričino cannot be attributed to the activities of the Michael’s workshop with certainty. However, it can be argued that the painting in Mlado Nagoričino was done by painters who were part of the entourage of this artist.

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