@book{
author = "Прерадовић, Дубравка",
year = "2023",
abstract = "Between 1907, when Vladimir Petković managed to, besides doing research at Žiča Monastery, take the first photographs of the monastery, laying the ground for the museum’s photo collection of medieval monuments, and 1940, when Branimir Bugarčić, the museum photographer, brought the last snapshots of Dečani Monastery, the National Museum’s experts and associates have researched and photographed over 300 sites. For more than three decades, with some interruptions, this activity unfolded in several stages determined, on the one hand, by the socio-political circumstances of the time and the internal museum policy, on the other. The appointment of Mihailo Valtrović for the guardian of the National Museum in April 1881 heralded a new chapter in the institution’s development. During his almost 25-year-long tenure, which ended in 1905, the matter of the Museum’s premises was resolved, and its internal organization was established by introducing departments; the museum collection was considerably expanded; the first exhibitions were held, and the first museum catalogs published; finally, the Museum opened its doors to visitors. Valtrović’s insistence on hiring professionals with suitable educational backgrounds proved justified and beneficial in many ways. The decision to appoint Miloje Vasić and Vladimir Petković as curators of the National Museum, an institution that, in the first century of its life, was responsible for both movable and immovable cultural heritage, facilitated the development of archaeology and art history in Serbia. The fact that, until 1935, the National Museum was under the direct jurisdiction of the Serbian Royal Academy and that its employees also taught at the university heavily influenced the scholarly direction of the museum staff. Petković’s arrival to the National Museum in 1905 marked a watershed in the formation of the previously neglected Department of Medieval and Byzantine Antiquities and the research of medieval heritage. The founding of the University of Belgrade (1905), the inception of its Department of Byzantine History (1906), and the emphasis on the history of Byzantine architecture in the curriculum of the Faculty of Technical Sciences gave an additional impetus to the growing interest in the research of Serbian antiquities. This interest was abundantly clear already in 1906. That year, Milorad Ruvidić and Branko Tanazević, architects and university professors, organized field research; Dragutin Anastasijević, founder of the chair for Byzantine studies, began photographing documents on Mount Athos; the journal Starinar [Antiquary] was relaunched; and Gabriel Millet arrived in Serbia and, in the company of Vladimir Petković and Petar Popović, started his research of medieval Serbian churches and monasteries. In 1907, the National Museum launched systematic campaigns to research and photograph medieval architecture and wall paintings. The purpose of this fieldwork was manifold. Monuments had to be documented and their state of repair determined so that plans for their protection and restoration could be made; at the same time, the museum’s holdings were to be expanded by forming a collection of frescoes, original or copies, and sculpture casts. The result of the museum’s first scholarly mission fully matched the planned concept. During fieldwork, photographs and copies of three frescoes were made, and one original fresco was moved to the Museum because it was precariously close to crumbling off the wall. On this occasion, Petković completed his previous research of the Ascension Church at Žiča Monastery and published his results in a series of articles in Starinar, a pioneering effort to offer a scholarly monograph on a medieval church to the local academic community. The first stage in scholarly research ended when the First Balkan War broke out (1912). Although there was an intention to explore Serbian churches and monasteries beyond the borders of the Kingdom of Serbia at the time, research had to be limited to those that could be reached without major challenges. In four campaigns undertaken from 1907 to 1911, Vladimir Petković examined and photographed around 30 monasteries and churches. In addition, Miloje Vasić and the architect Kostantin J. Jovanović explored some other sites in 1909. The fieldwork efforts of the museum’s experts, among other things, revealed the monuments’ state of repair. Hence, the National Museum launched initiatives to erect temporary protective roofing over Rudenica, the church of the Gradac Monastery, and the Church of St. Nicholas in Kuršumlija. Unfortunately, the modestly sized collection of photos compiled up to 1911 was partially destroyed in the bombing of Belgrade at the outset of the Great War. The surviving fragile glass plates are still one of the most valuable testimonies to the condition of the monuments at the beginning of the 20th century. The circumstances of the period were such that the task could not be based on a predefined long-term action plan, which would have allowed the churches and monasteries to be explored in order. Therefore, in 1913, the Serbian Royal Academy set up a committee to devise a plan for photographing and publishing monuments of old Serbian architecture and frescoes, but its work ultimately came to naught. Namely, the Academy wanted to launch research campaigns, with the involvement of Vladimir Petković, and have their research results published as soon and as competently as possible. However, this ambitious plan was abandoned after just two fieldwork trips, and the results of the examined monuments would not appear for another two decades. Thus, all efforts to research medieval art and architecture fell to the National Museum, whose staff was not only qualified enough but also remarkably determined to carry out this challenging task. In the years after the Great War, the National Museum, in vain, sought a way out of this “deadly limbo”. As Vasić’s attempts to find an at least acceptable solution for housing its reduced and damaged collection – “but a shadow of what the Museum once was” – proved futile, he resigned from the office of the institution’s director. On 1 September 1919, the guardian of the National Museum became Vladimir Petković. Having assumed office, Petković submitted a draft on the “organization of the Museum and the work on safeguarding antiquities, which would provide the Museum with the needed work force for many tasks in and beyond it,” and at the same, prepared projects intended to elevate the National Museum to the “level of a cultural institution desperately needed in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.” Researching Serbian medieval art and forming a medieval collection as a key department in the institution were central concerns in the museum program. From 1920 to 1927, with the funds allocated for field research considerably reduced, efforts to examine, photograph, and publish medieval architecture and wall paintings under the auspices of the National Museum brought together almost all scholars of medieval studies in the country. Petković, who led most research trips, was joined by Lazar Mirković and Žarko Tatić, a liturgist and an architect, curators of the medieval collection, paintings conservators Paško Vučetić and Svetislav Strala, and photographers Anta Mudrovčić, Jakov Pavelić, and Vladimir Petropavlovski. The Museum’s former director Miloje Vasić, historians Dragutin Anastasijević and Vladimir Ćorović, architects Milan Zloković and Djurdje Bošković, and art historian Milan Kašanin worked with them or pursued independent research with the National Museum’s financial and moral support. In 1920, it finally became possible to examine the monuments that had until then lain in the inaccessible territories of the Ottoman Empire. A team of specialists first headed to Kosovo, when the monasteries of Banjska and Gračanica were examined for the first time under the auspices of the National Museum, moving on to inspect the monuments in the Novi Pazar area: St. Peter’s Church, Djurdjevi Stupovi, and Sopoćani. A year later (1921), the monuments in Macedonia, in the vicinity of Tetovo, Kičevo, and Prilep, finally became available for research. The foundations of Stefan Nemanja were also systematically explored the same year. Owing to the National Museum’s support, Miloje Vasić examined Studenica, while Vladimir Ćorović and Dragutin Anastasijević inspected St. Nicholas and the Virgin’s Church near Kuršumlija. On the same occasion, Anastasijević conducted archaeological research at the Virgin’s Church – the first excavations of “Serbian antiquities.” In 1922, Petković and his team had another opportunity to study the churches and monasteries in Metohija and the Lim valley. This research campaign yielded many watercolor paintings and figural compositions by Svetislav Strala, ground plan drawings, and more than 300 photographs. In addition, the team recorded 250 inscriptions, most previously unknown, and Petković published them soon thereafter. In 1923, research focused on Macedonia: Markov Manastir (Mark’s Monastery) and the churches in the areas of the Ohrid and Prespa. It was Montenegro’s turn in 1924 (Bar, Lake Skadar, Podgorica, Kolašin), followed by the Lim Valley and, finally, Prizren. The same year, work on collecting documentations for a monograph on Markov Manastir continued. A particularly notable year in this period of intense and fruitful fieldwork was 1925, when as many as eight summer research trips took place, including at the Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos. That year, besides examining the Hilandar katholikon and the hermitage of St. Sava on Mount Athos, Žarko M. Tatić led three more expeditions. The Virgin’s Church at Kalenić was researched and photographed, to the very last detail, with both “regular” equipment and “state-of-theart color photography,” followed by St. Andrew and the Virgin’s Monastery in the Matka canyon near Skopje, Golubac, and the Tuman Monastery. Vladimir Petković spent the year studying churches in Macedonia, in the vicinity of Skopje, Kumanovo, Kriva Palanka, Kratovo, and Štip, and the Konče Monastery. He also led an expedition to research and take photographs of the churches in the Drina River basin and the Vraćevšnica Monastery. Finally, in 1925, the National Museum helped Milan Kašanin, then a clerk at the Art Department of the Ministry of Education, to inspect and take pictures of the White Church of Karan, the subject of his doctoral dissertation. He was accompanied by one of the Museum’s photographers, and the pair used the occasion to visit Dobrun, Mileševa, and other churches in the Prijepolje area. Unlike the fieldwork-intensive previous year, outdoor research could not continue in 1926 in the same scope. Research of Hilandar was suspended due to lack of funding, so Petković, accompanied by Lazar Mirković, devoted himself to the treasuries of the monasteries on Fruška Gora. During this short ten-day mission, the director of the Museum also managed to explore Dečani, photographing its treasury and some frescoes, and the Patriarchate of Peć, moving on to Rudnik in Drenica, Banjska, Sopoćani, Djurdjevi Stupovi (finding the monument in a lamentable state of repair), and Stara and Nova Pavlica. Meanwhile, having received funding from the National Museum, Vladimir Ćorović had an opportunity – admittedly, for just five days – to explore the Žitomislić Monastery, which he visited with the museum photographer to collect information on its history. On the same occasion, he stayed in Trebinje, where he researched St. Nicholas Church, built by Radoje Hrabren, and its well-preserved frescoes. Despite a sizeable reduction in the funding of the National Museum in 1927, field research was not suspended. It continued until 1934 with the financial support of the Royal Academy and the University, allowing Petković to focus on systematic research of the Pantokrator Church at Dečani. In this period, many monuments were studied and photographed owing to the efforts of Djurdje Bošković, the museum’s curator, and his advocacy in the Committee for Maintaining and Restoring Churches and Monasteries. By 1935, when Petković’s term as the director of the National Museum ended, the photograph collection included several thousand negatives. The results of this intense field research were regularly published in academic journals. The Starinar journal, which had gone out of print in 1911, was relaunched in 1922, and most of its articles in the following period were authored by the employees of the National Museum. The 1920s also saw intensive publishing activity at the National Museum. In this period, it launched the series Srpski spomenici (Serbian Monuments, 1922), which included seven books: five monographs (Manastir Ravanica, 1922; Manastir Studenica, 1924; Markov manastir, 1925; Manastir Kalenić, 1926; Manastir Manasija, 1928) and two albums of medieval paintings (La peinture serbe du moyen age I–II, 1930–1934). From the second volume onward, their publication was financed by the Mihajlo Pupin Fund, which the illustrious scientist had established at the National Museum. After the founding of the Prince Paul Museum (1935), the relocation to the New Palace, the change of the management, and efforts to expand the collection and present them in a suitable space, the focus, previously on researching monuments, shifted to their photo-documentation. The ambition of the Museum, which now bore the Prince Regent’s name, was to create a big central archive of all relevant monuments in the territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. However, with the exception of a photographing campaign on the Adriatic coast, the main subject continued to be the Serbian medieval heritage. Branimir Bugarčić, the museum photographer at the time, worked alone, and in those few years running up to the breakout of World War II, many new shots were added to the medieval monument photo collection. Detailed insight into the study of monuments suggests that, in spite of good intentions, it was not based on a predetermined plan of research and publication but, at the beginning, two criteria seem to have had a decisive role in the selection of research subjects: first, the historical importance of a given church, followed by its accessibility. Many sites were not covered by the country’s road network, while others lay beyond the reach of local experts because they were in Ottoman-controlled territories. Hence, it should come as no surprise that systematic research of medieval monuments began with the Ascension Church at Žiča, whose importance for medieval and more recent history was manifold. The coronation church of medieval Serbian rulers was also the site of young King Alexander Obrenović’s anointment in 1889 and King Peter I Karadjordjević’s coronation in 1904. Therefore, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, scholars tended to focus on Žiča and then on Ravanica, Prince Lazar’s foundation and burial church, which Petković describes as the “sepulcher of Serbian glory and grandeur, like a mausoleum, standing atop the buried freedom and independence of the Serbian state.” It was not without relevance that those two churches could be reached with no major obstacles. Furthermore, Ćuprija, a town not far from Prince Lazar’s foundation, stood on the railway Belgrade–Niš, which had become operational in 1884. Research campaigns at Žiča and Ravanica were followed by explorations of Studenica, the mausoleum of the progenitor of the saintbearing Nemanjić dynasty, which was, admittedly, harder to reach. The publication of the volumes in the edition Srpski spomenici reflected this order. The monograph on Ravanica was followed by a book on Studenica. The rush to research the monuments in the southern reaches of the country was due to political reasons, which is reflected in the publication of a monograph on Markov Manastir, whose katholikon houses frescoes with historical personages, which were overpainted several times on the orders of the Bulgarian Exarchate. The monograph on Manasija was supposed to be published to mark the 500th anniversary of the passing and canonization of Despot Stefan Lazarević. Albums of paintings were prepared under ideological pressure because of concerns that the study of Serbian medieval art lagged behind the academic achievements of neighboring countries, especially in Romanian and Bulgarian scholarship. In the 1920s, these countries produced, in addition to monographs, seminal syntheses on medieval art. In the local milieu, unlike in architectural research, which yielded several important books in the early decades of the 20th century – Millet’s work on old Serbian architecture (L’ancien art serbe. Les eglises, Paris 1919) and Miloje Vasić’s contribution (Žiča i Lazarica: studije iz srpske umetnosti srednjeg veka, 1928) – no such attempts emerged in the studies of medieval fresco painting and, more importantly, no efforts were made to offer a comprehensive synthesis of old Serbian art which would include both architecture and wall paintings. Admittedly, the Bulgarian Archaeological Institute launched its series on monuments of art (Художествени паметници на България) two years after the National Museum started publishing its Srpski spomenici. The first volume in the series was André Grabar’s monograph on the Boyana Church, and the second discussed the churches of Mesembria. Both were bilingual editions (in Bulgarian and French). The first volume in the series Orient et Byzance, which Gabriel Millet launched in Paris, was Grabar’s doctoral dissertation on Bulgarian frescoes (La peinture religieuse en Bulgarie, Paris, 1928). It was followed by Ioan Ștefănescu’s publications on wall paintings in Wallachia, Bukovina, Moldavia, and Transylvania. In 1922, an extensive work on Romanian art from the 14th to the 19th centuries, authored by Nicolae Iorga and Georghe Balş, was published in Paris. A grand exhibition of Romanian art was held in 1925, when the still indispensable study on the treasury of the Putna Monastery came out. Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, there was no initiative in Serbia to present old Serbian art abroad. Such an exhibition could barely be organized at home, on the Museum’s premises, which the efforts to showcase the exhibits of medieval art for the Second International Congress of Byzantine Studies, held in Belgrade (1927), made painfully obvious. Besides, notwithstanding the curators’ considerable exertions, the National Museum’s medieval collection did not acquire many new items during the interwar period. However, one should bear in mind that the management of the Prince Paul Museum managed to procure the Miroslav Gospel, which still holds pride of place at the National Museum, and the Prizren copy of Dušan’s Code, later returned to the National Library. In the same period, fragments of stone sculpture from Banjska and the Ulcinj ciborium were added to the Museum’s collection; the institution also bought a silver plate with Emperor Dušan’s inscription and acquired a splendid jewelry collection from Markova Varoš near Prilep. Until 1935, the National Museum was essentially seen as a seminar attached to the Department of Archaeology and Art History because its directors also taught at the university; hence, the history of medieval monument research under its auspices reflects the situation in art-historical scholarship in Serbia up to World War II. Being responsible for training new generations of scholars and holding a prominent position at the Museum, Petković was a towering figure in the country’s art-historical studies. In line with his methodology, the primary task of research was collecting and describing evidence. Holding on to the outdated principles of his German mentors, he additionally simplified them, insisting on detailed iconographic descriptions but stopping short of offering an interpretation of the imagery. The founding of the University of Skopje, with new teaching staff which included Radoslav Grujić and Svetozar Radojčić, and the growing number of professional art historians and scholars interested in the history of art, such as the liturgist Lazar Mirković, led to important advances in medieval art research in the 1930s. And yet, it was precisely the evidence collected and published by Vladimir Petković and his associates that allowed the new generation of scholars to write syntheses on art history. An indispensable tool in this endeavor was the photo collection of medieval monuments on glass plates established to “make it much easier to study our monuments of art” and “safeguard these monuments for posterity” – bringing Petković’s initial idea to fruition. In many ways remarkable, this collection was a reliable starting point for the research presented in this book. The acerbic notes of the scholars who contributed to its formation and numerous archival documents allowed me to reconstruct the place and role of the National Museum in the documenting, research, publication, and preservation of medieval churches and monasteries in a time when an institutional protection and legislation on cultural heritage had yet to be introduced. This work aims to shed light on an important yet often overlooked period in the history of this intuition, which lasted more than three decades and saw the National Museum’s experts go far beyond their professional duties to lay the ground for a critical and scholarly approach to the research of Serbian medieval heritage., У Одељењу за архивску и документациону грађу Народног музеја Србије се, између осталог, чува драгоцена колекција снимака средњовековних споменика на стакленим плочама. Она је настала у периоду између 1907. и 1940. године током којег су стручњаци Народног музеја и њихови сарадници истражили готово три стотине локалитета на подручју Србије, Косова и Метохије, Македоније, Црне Горе, Херцеговине, Далмације и Грчке (Света Гора) и направили више од десет хиљада снимака. Њихова пажња је првенствено била усмерена на живопис и архитектуру цркава, али није занемарен ни садржај манастирских ризница. Био је то период када се Народни музеј, услед непостојања законских аката којима би се уредила брига о наслеђу, старао и о споменицима на терену. Отуда је у програму Музеја истраживање и документовање средњовековне баштине заузело истакнуто место. Задатак музејских делатника на терену имао је двојаку намену – да те споменике проуче и документују, као и да констатују њихово стање у циљу давања предлога за њихову заштиту и/или рестаурацију. Стога су на самом почетку тих истраживања покренуте иницијативе за подизање заштитних кровова над Руденицом, Градцем као и над црквом Светог Николе у Куршумлији. Резултат тог дугогодишњег теренског рада јесу бројне, пионирске, научне студије о тада проучаваним споменицима. Осим небројених чланака који су објављивани првенствено у једином оновременом стручном гла- силу – часопису Старинар, који је издавало Српско археолошко друштво, свака- ко треба издвојити прве научне монографије о средњовековним црквама што су публиковане у оквиру едиције Српски споменици, коју је 1922. покренуо Народни музеј. Коначно, претходно поменута колекција ванредно очуваних снимака непресушан је извор стално нових података за истраживање старе српске уметно- сти. Ови снимци су важан документ о стању споменика пре обимних рестаураторских радова који су изведени током друге половине двадесетог столећа, јер су захваљујући њима многи, данас из различитих разлога изгубљени, споменици или делови целина сачувани за будућност. Отуда је ова колекција снимака била полазна тачка за моје истраживање тог важног и недовољно валоризованог периода у историји Народног музеја, будући да је историјат формирања ове колекције једновремено и повест проучавања средњовековних цркава и манастира у Србији. На том послу су били ангажова- ни практично сви оновремени релевантни медиевисти, како кустоси запослени у Музеју тако и истраживачи које је Музеј ангажовао или чија је истраживања подржавао, који су у времену нешто дужем од три деценије, а првенствено у годинама између два светска рата, поставили солидне темеље изучавању српске средњовековне уметности.",
publisher = "Београд : Народни музеј Србије",
title = "У име науке и домовине : Истраживања средњовековних спомени ка под окриљем Народног музеја Србије и њихови резултати : (1906–1940)",
url = "https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_dais_15708"
}
