Serbian Art as Seen through the Eyes of Writers from the Late 14th and Early 15th Centuries
The article studies a number of texts describing artworks of the last great epoch of Serbian medieval art which is linked with the end of the 14th and first decades of the 15th centuries in the state of princes and despots from the Lazarević and Branković dynasties. Art restoration was versatile and encompassed architecture, painting, literature and applied art. The new creative zest was accompanied by written compositions dedicated to churches that had been built at that time or earlier, and which were considered to be the most beautiful works of art. They were written by the most educated people of the time: Patriarch Danilo III, Bishop of Peć Marko, Andonije Rafail, Gregory Tsamblak, Constantine the Philosopher and other writers whose names have remained unknown. Their descriptions of the monasteries are similar tothe Byzantine ekphrases, which these writers must have been familiar with. Such descriptions never appear as independent works both in Slavonic and in Serbian literature, but have always been a part of another composition, usually of a religious genre.