200 Years of the Saint Peter and Paul with the Presentation of Bela Crkva Copperplate
(copperplate on paper, coloured, unknown copperplate engraver, 1815)
Bela Crkva was founded in 1717 according to the plan of settling Banat and securing the border from the Turkish intrusion. The orthodox residents of the prosperous town on the border of the then Austrian Empire wanted to highlight their good incorporation into the political and social circumstances of the time and to protect their confessional and national unity. They succeeded in doing this with the means of the copperplate, which is the work of an unknown author, and it was manufactured according to the drawing of Pavel Đurković or Arsenije Jakšić in 1815. The graphic sheet of this copperplate is dominated by a rectangular field with the saints between which is the temple-front of the Bela Crkva church. On the left and the right there is a text containing a short explanation of the represented, written in big cyrillic letters. In the lesser rectangular, under the saints’ feet, the panorama of Bela Crkva is shown with three parts of the settlement.
275 Years of the Monastery Studenica Copperplate
(copperplate on paper, 1740, the 1965 print, Gotfrid Dirst, the author)
When the presentation of the Church of the Dormition in Studenica was engraved on a copperplate in 1740, the monastery was turning 550 years of its existence. Other than the name engraved below the presentation of the holy object, there are no other recorded data about the purchaser of the copperplate, Nikolaj Antonije Prodanović. Also, almost nothing is known about the author of the copperplate, the Pest graphic, Gotfrid Dirst. Scantiness of data, however, does not belittle the importance of this graphics, because Studenica is the first medieval monument that appears as the main subject in the Serbian graphic arts. The central part of the composition belongs to the Church of the Dormition, an endowment and a crypt of the founder of the Serbian state and the monastery itself, Stefan Nemanja.
275 Years of the Saint Demetrius Icon
(tempera on wood, 1735-1740, author Hristofor Žefarović)
Saint Demetrius icon was painted in the period between 1735 and 1740 by a monk, archdeacon, painter and graphic, Hristofor Žefarović (Dojran, end of XVII century— Moscow, 1753), most versatile Serbian artist of the first half of XVIII century, who signed himself as “Illyrian-Russian common iconographer“.
Saint Demetrius, the patron of cities Thessaloniki and Sremska Mitrovica, protector of Siberia, the Russian area, is painted on a rearing fiery horse, as he stabs Bulgarian tsar Kaloyan, who falls on the grassy surface covered with bunch of tiny flowers. Icon was found in the bell tower of the Church of Three Holy Hierarchs in Novi Sad (Almas church).
