Page update: 01 January 2000

Zemen monastery

Completely different from both the official Byzantine style and the other official Turnovo School, are the architecture and painting of the Zemen Monastery, founded during the 14th century. It is located above the Strouma River, 76 km south-east of Sofia. According to a donor's inscription in the St. John the Theologian Church, in 1354, the ruler of the Velbuzhd Principality, Despot Deyan, enlarged the church of the already existing monastery, decorating it with murals. A solid stone building, it was the only one to survive the monastery's ravaging and depopulation after Bulgaria's subjection to Ottoman rule. It was not restored until the 19th Century.The builders probably changed the entire exterior of the church in keeping with their ideas.and tastes. Such as it remains today, the Zemen church is an absolute exception to the whole of Bulgaria's mediaeval architecture: a cubic building, with three semicylindrical apsides with equal height, reaching up to the roof cornice which unites them in a single group. The roof - a four-wall squashed pyramid with a cupola atop a cylindrical drum, decorated by two rows of blind arches - is unique in the entire Balkan Peninsula. The facades which are broken up only plastically - by means of blind arches and lacking colour effects - complete the harsh original appearance. A strange blend is achieved with the impact of the inside murals - also harsh, somewhat crude, as if deliberately arrchaic.

With few parallels in contemporary painting, they continued the traditions of the preiconoclastic period in the Eastern Orthodox art. Archaism is visible both in the themes of the religious scenes and in the means of portrayal, the presentation of architectural decors, the use of light and space. The colours are saturated and strong, lacking nuances; the figures, the folds of the garments, the ovals and features of the slightly individualized faces are outlined with thick, hard contours. The aim was to create a solid and down-to-earth image - the Biblical heroes are calm and strong persons, alien to either extasy or asceticism. The only exception is the figure of John of Rila, one of the earliest portraits of the saint.The portraits of donors Despot Deyan and his wife are considerably individualized, hinting at drawing from nature. A similar trend is observed only in the potraits of Sebastocrator Kaloyan and his wife Desislava in the Boyana Church (1259). The face of the ruler's wife has a kind of simple living beauty, and elements of folk embroidery are depicted on the headcloth showing below her crown. The Zemen master also had a particular weakness for folk-style details which he skillfully depicted.

Finally, as a vivid proof of his imagination, creative freedom and striving for originality, is the scene <> which does not exist either in gospel texts or in painting Bulgarian or foreign, nor even in apocrypha. It is the fruit of the imagination of the Zemen artist alone.

All this makes this monastery a rare monument of original mediaeval folk art, of that marked trend in religious painting which Andrei Grabar called << democratic trend>>.