Starinar (Jan 2002)

Two stone icons from the Home Museum collection in Jagodina

  • Cvetković Branislav

DOI
https://doi.org/10.2298/STA0252175C
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2002, no. 52
pp. 175 – 180

Abstract

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Two stone icons are kept in the funds of the Home Museum in Jagodina, which have originally belonged to the non-classified archaeological collection, and after revision became items in the collection of icons and cult objects. The icons belong to the genre of the Middle Ages small form plastic, the function of which is sometimes difficult to define, and its creator and workshop even more problematical. The first icon (5,5 x 4,5 x 1,0 cm) was purchased for the Museum collection in 1965 from the anonymous seller, who claimed to have discovered it in the vicinity of Prokuplje. It is a double-sided icon with profiled frame, with shallow relief bust image of St. Nicholas on one side and on another a presentation of the Christ's christening in Jordan. Another icon (5,5 x 5,5 x 1,0 cm) was discovered during the first probing archaeological excavations on the territory of Jagodina in 1962. On one side which originally was the icon's backside with no images at all, a bust image of St. Michael was subsequently carved in, while on the other side there are remains of an unknown saint. Diffraction x-ray analysis has shown that both icons are made of almost identical material (soft brown stone- clay shale of the marl-clay type). Comparative material from the Serbian and the Bulgarian collections have shown that both mentioned items may be generally dated into the period from 13th–15th century, and that by their structural and iconographic characteristics they follow older forms of Byzantine glyptic Closely related to an individual, the mentioned icons were used for the so called individual religious purpose. They were made for the believers from the lower social classes in the Middle Ages, and were most probably made in monk or city workshops.