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| The Temple of Martyrs and Holy Warriors |
The Ravanica Monastery was founded by Prince Lazar, the most important ruler of medieval Serbia, who died in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo and was beatified.
By Milorad St. Ilić, Photo by Dragan Bosnić
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| The monastery and its church, and other edifices, dedicated to the Ascension, is encircled by a strong defensive wall that bears seven towers and is dominated by a tower that hosts the chapel. The monestery is located at the foot of Mt. Kučajske in the village of Senje, near the city of Ćuprija. The church was built between 1375 and 1377, and was adorned with frescoes sometime before the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Ravanica’s founder wanted to rest eternally at the monastery, and indeed Prince Lazar’s holy remains were kept there after his death until 1690, when they were transported to Buda, and then to Szentendre (both Hungary) in an event known as the Great Migration of Serbs. His remains were then moved to the church of the restored Vrdnik Monastery in today’s Srem region. After nearly three centuries, the holy relics of Prince Lazar were ultimately re-buried at his endowment Ravanica. |
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The monastery suffered a terrible fate. It was devastated and burnt in 1396, 1398 and 1436 by the Ottoman Turks. The church sustained serious damage in 1686/1697 when the Turks killed a larger number of monks. Ravanica’s monk called daskal (teacher) Stefan, who returned to Ravanica in 1717 after fleeing in 1690, renovated the church and restored its annihilated narthex. By the time of his death in 1729, he had also renewed other monastery structures, and had partly beautified the narthex with wall-paintings.
The monastery also suffered during the Kočina Krajina (an anti-Turkish uprising in 1788) and was repaired six years later. Some repair work on the monastery complex was carried out at the time of the First Serbian Uprising (1804) with assistance from the insurgency’s leader Karadjordje Petrović. |
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During the rein of Prince Miloš Obrenović, the church in 1833 received a new iconostasis, done by Moler Janja. Parts of the frescoes in the narthex were painted in the 1850s, while a new guesthouse/ dormitory was built on the foundations of the old refectory. The monastery was archaeologically researched and some conservation work was completed following World War II. |
| Ravanica’s church is unique for its architectural and artistic features that introduced a new style in art – the Morava School. The triconchal base in the form of a developed trefoil derived from an inscribed cross with a large central dome above it, and four smaller diagonally placed cupolas, has made the Ravanica Monastery church the model for the Morava School. The decorative masonry is congruent with the church’s architecture and became a model for decorating churches in Moravian Serbia and the Despotate. The rosette-like shallow-carved masonry decorations, the ornaments on the archivolts, with their intricate geometrical forms and floral elements, as well as figurative zoomorphic representations around the windows make for a new system of embellishment that instills a remarkable sense of vivacity and picturesque design, with its fragmented and polychromatic church walls. |
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Ravanica as artistic model
The iconographic characteristics and presence of rarely painted cycles, scenes and figures allow for straightforward recognition of the spiritual and conceptual framework of Prince Lazar, who commissioned the frescoes. The stylistic traits of Ravanica’s wall paintings have pointed the way and served as a hallmark for the development of artistic conceptions in the decades when the politically dependent Serbia became fertile ground for flourishing creative work. | |
| Frescoes of exceptional class make up the most valuable part of the Serbian painting heritage dating back to the time of Prince Lazar (1372-1389) and his son, Despot Stevan Lazarević (1389-1427), as their themes and arrangement fully reflect the theological concepts and spiritual climate of their time. |
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The new decorative ideals formed in separate wholes, the figures’ lyrical execution, their appearance of finished portraits, their forceful movements, the pliant manner in which they are fashioned coupled with a certain expressivity that they carry – constitute the main features of these heavily damaged wall paintings that marked the beginning of a major epoch in medieval Serbian art.
As a significant pivotal point of spiritual, cultural, literary and artistic life, Ravanica exerted influence on the emergence of a number of churches and monasteries, including the nearby Sisojevac Monastery or the church in the Petrus region in the Crnica River valley. |
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