RETHINKING TRADITION AND INDIVIDUALISM AS KEY TRAITS OF JACOV ORFELIN’S STYLE - A CASE STUDY ON ICONOSTASIS PAINTING IN THE HISTORICAL BANAT

Abstract

Tradition redefined by innovations is the topic our study proposes to investigate as fragments of visual transformations in the episode of Jacov Orfelin iconostasis painting. In this field, the particular example we have studied was not a singular manifestation, although it can be subsumed under the artistic evolution of the period, but a paradigmatic case of East meeting West, having as result a new perspective of visual dogma, getting endowed with new connotations. Viennese, Russian and Ukrainian baroque tendencies are the most obvious directions through which Serbian painters propose the new stylistic orientation. Those who proliferated the innovative models asserted themselves predominantly in Serbia, where they created a religious painting deeply contaminated by the inputs of the modern age, and acknowledged by the historiography of the subject as “the founders of the Serbian Baroque”. Although written sources corroborate information on biographies of the Serbian artists in connection with their artistic discourse and evolution, the study rethinks some of the concepts involved in the configuration of eighteenth-century artistic genre in the historical Banat. Moreover, the topic addressed will highlight the key aspects of Serbian late baroque, rococo and neoclassical art assimilation and advent throughout comparative - analytical methods, focusing on iconography and formal changes. In order to do so, the artwork under scrutiny is positioned within the original socio political, and religious frameworks focusing on examples that uphold or deconstruct the role this painter played in fostering a visual change. Issues regarding the ornaments will be also of reference as the iconostasis is a complex formal and iconographical medium.