„Not only average laypeople, but even the emperors themselves and church dignitaries must have been enchanted by what they saw as they entered the Dečani church“.
So far, the Dečani frescoes’ artistic qualities have received mostly negative criticism. While, on one hand, it is acknowledged that they were a true treasury of the themes and iconography of Late Byzantine art, and that they themselves had enriched it with many unique aspects, the critics continue to repeat the once stated judgments about the frescoes being the work of mediocre and even poor artists and artisans, whose primary goal was to display the themes as thoroughly and clearly as possible. Our era has also partially accepted some of other prejudices about the Dečani frescos – that they were the work of Greek or other artists under a strong western influence, and that the artists who had worked in the nave marked the end of one period, while the painters of the frescos in the narthex announced the trends that would evolve in the 1360s and 1370s. Only a very few researchers who studied them more carefully have managed to demonstrate that numerous painters worked in Dečani; they singled out the works of some of them and pointed out their diversity and difference in artistic achievement.
This is confirmed by our survey of the artists, which was actually not very difficult, because during the ten years which the Dečani church was painted, numerous artists and painters’ groups with varying concepts and skills succeeded each other or simultaneously worked there. We have also shown that some of the painters could not meet the demands of such a feat– e.g. the artists who painted the Ecumenical Councils and the frescos in the central part of the east wall of the narthex, or, among those who worked in the nave, the first painter of the Acts of the Apostles, the one who did a few frescos in the cycle of St. Demetrius, or the artist whose portrayals of the holy martyrs can be seen on the pilasters. There were also a number of mediocre artists, who painted the Creation of the World, most of the cycle of St. Nicholas, Christ’s Miracles and Parables in the south chapel, and the frescos in the prothesis. Those who worked in the choirs and in the altar area were significantly better, though some of them altered their techniques and were thus not consistent in their quality (those who painted the area beneath the dome), while others strongly expressed their personal style (the painter who did the greatest part of the Menologion, or the one who painted the Akathist and the individual figures in the south chapel). However, the painters of the cycle of St. Demetrius, the lower sections of the Acts of the Apostles and the Old Testament themes in the western parts of the nave were, however, some of the best artists of the time; this particularly applies to the painter of the Second Coming and the Dormition of the Holy Virgin. Accordingly, one of the most important characteristics of the Dečani frescoes is their varying quality, which is not unusual for a church of that size, where a great number of artists worked together, even though the commissioners probably tried to minimize those differences as much as they could. The fact that it took a long time to paint the church was not without consequences: apart from the most general idea, we know almost nothing about the progress, or the reasons why some of the painters’ groups worked longer, and others stayed there for shorter periods of time, why some of them left the job, not finishing the painting of a particular area or a thematic unit. It could be assumed that the work on the frescoes in different parts of the church was assigned to different artists, and that only a few of them, usually the better ones, would paint in other areas as well. Therefore, is not too difficult to identify the scope of their work and places where their paintings met, though some of them, as they descended towards the socle, greatly changed their styles, sometimes even to the point of being unrecognizable.
What all of the painters of Dečani had in common was that, more or less, they were connected to early 14th century classicist art. This was not specific only to them, because all of Byzantine art until the middle of the century, and in some places even longer, with the exception of the peripheral and provincial works, was merely the continuation of the art which reached its zenith between 1315 and 1320. During that short period of time, the classicist tendencies of the early Palaiologan painting finally took shape in Constantinople and Thessaloniki, whence they spread to nearby Mount Athos, Macedonia and Serbia. The mosaics, frescos and icons, whose authors are mostly anonymous, though there are some known by name (such as Georgios Kaliergis, Michael Astrapas and Eutychius), unbound by superfluous narration, with nicely coordinated poses, movements and expressions of the figures and careful color transitions, harmonious and balanced compositions, with painted architecture and landscapes perfectly incorporated into the structure of a painting and open borrowing from Hellenistic art – for many years later, such paintings inevitably imposed themselves on imperial artists, but on others as well, as highly esteemed models. It is important to note that the mosaics and frescos in the monasteries of the Holy Virgin Pammakaristos and Chora in Constantinople, some icons that are now kept in Ohrid, the mosaics in the church of the Holy Apostles in Thessaloniki, the frescos and icons of Hilandar or the wall paintings in the church of St. Savior in Veroia are contemporaneous with some frescos in Serbia – in Staro Nagoričino, the King's Church in Studenica and in Gračanica; they all share the same approaches and the same artistic quality. This means that the leading artistic expression of the Byzantine world of the time was not only accepted an nourished in the Serbian milieu, giving rise to some of the supreme works of art, but it also set the aesthetic norms and beliefs that would long stand before donors and painters. This is fully confirmed by the Dečani frescoes.
Everything that was being created and built upon for decades, from Studenica to Banjska, and in the churches which were built before them, blossomed in Dečani to previously unknown proportions – in no other church, Serbian or Byzantine, did so many frescoes appear, and nowhere was the history of salvation so thoroughly depicted as here.
Indeed, anyone who steps into the Dečani church is enchanted by the multitude of paintings that surround him. In the narthex, and then in the nave, one is struck by the huge image of Christ the Pantokrator, and a remarkable Holy Virgin in the apse, who is spreading her hands in prayer for mankind. At the entrance, one learns that the first Serbian emperor was a descendant of esteemed, holy, Orthodox ancestors, and all around the church one would see the face of the holy founder, Stefan Dečanski, and portraits of the other donor of Dečani, King and Emperor Stefan Dušan. The splendor of the place was augmented by endless ornamental wreaths, painted in vivid tones and drawn imaginatively, which adorn all the posts, all the ribs of the vaults, all the narrow surfaces that reach down to the ground, and all horizontal zones that run all along the walls of the church. These picturesque, geometrical, and floral ornaments were probably quite astonishing the average person of the time, and for learned people would have recalled the beauty of Solomon’s Temple and the Old Testament Tabernacle. The Dečani church was intended to be their continuation but it was also meant to surpass them. And the beauty of the church was supplemented by precious pigments, the azure blueness of the backgrounds and gold, spread from top of the dome to the floor of the church, over the clothes and halos of saints, on the painted weapons and furniture, on vessels and books. Nowhere in the Byzantine world is there so much gold on the frescos. It looks as if the creators of Dečani wanted to surpass the famous gold of Banjska. Gold was meant to endow the Dečani church with divine light, and, at the same time, edify and glorify its patrons. All this, undoubtedly, left a magnificent impression upon their contemporaries and their descendants who, being without words to describe it, could only note that the church of Dečani surpassed “all thought with its beauty, for which an entire year would not be long enough to describe”.
