Cuprija: MRA-SRB-Cup002
Type Sample Item
Sample ID
- MRA-SRB-Cup002
Sample Material Type
- Mural painting
Sample Sub-type
- fragment
Dimensions (cm)
- Length
- 3.6
- Width
- 2.5
- Height
- 0.8
- Notes
- top left fragment
- Length
- 2.2
- Width
- 1.6
- Height
- 1.2
- Notes
- top middle fragment
- Length
- 1.6
- Width
- 1
- Height
- 0.7
- Notes
- top right fragment
- Length
- 2.2
- Width
- 2.2
- Height
- 0.9
- Notes
- bottom left fragment
- Length
- 1.5
- Width
- 1.2
- Height
- 1
- Notes
- bottom middle fragment
- Length
- 1.5
- Width
- 1.2
- Height
- 1
- Notes
- bottom right fragment
Weight
- weight value (g)
- 19.18
- Notes
- all fragments together
Geographic Location
- Country
- Serbia
- Place
- Cuprija
- Detailed location not available
- no
Site/monument
- Serbia (SRB)
Cuprija
Ravanica Monastery
Historical note about the site/monument
- Ravanica is an Orthodox monastery that is located close to Ćuprija, in Central Serbia and it is dedicated to the ascension of Christ. The establishment dates in the last third of the 14th century (1375-1377) and originally served as the financial endowment of the Lazar of Serbia, or the Serbian ruler Hrebeljanović, who created the huge Moravian Serbian. The Lazar was buried here after his death in the Kosovo battle (1389), where the prince headed the defense of his realms from the invading Ottoman Turks army. Ever since and throughout the next century the Ottomans conducted numerous assaults to the monastery, that was always able to resist. Only during the great war after the so-called second siege of Vienna (1683), the decisive battle where the Christian Coalition gained the final victory over the Ottoman Turk strength, many monks were killed. In the offshoots of the war, the Turkish led a decisive offensive in 1690 to the monastery. The few surviving monks fled and took the remains of the Prince Lazar with them. Following the flight, the place remained inhabited, spoliated and deserted. Three decades after, the last monk got back to Ravanica and built a new narthex. Even so, the monastery was assaulted again multiple times: during the Serbian revolution (first third of the 19th century) and the Second World Was (1943), with the Germans. The several assaults to the monastery provided it with a sturdy defensive structure, consisting in multiple watchtowers and strong walls. The floor plan consists in the 18th-century narthex and an enlarged trefoil on the ground floor supporting a nine-sided dome and four smaller octagonal domes surrounding it, one at each corner. The domes open in 62 windows. On the exterior, the decoration consists on single rows of natural white stone alternated to three-line rows of bricks. The decoration consists also of ceramic adds featuring geometrical patterns, floral and figurative motifs. Remarkable are also the frescoes, that is a many-men job undertaken between 1385 and 1387, featuring figurative representations of the Orthodox dogma and local history.
Further reading:
Starodubcev, Tatjana (2012). On portraits in Ravanica. In: Zbornik radova Vizantološkog institutam, 49: pp. 333–354.