Стилистические особенности фресок церкви святителя Николая в Мелнике. История изучения и художественный контекст

The church of St. Nicholas in Melnik, Bulgaria, is a well-known monument with a complicated fate, repeatedly mentioned in scholarly literature. In a recent article by Georgi Gerov, its dating to 1211–1216 has been confirmed, thus allowing us to discuss the place of this ensemble in the context of the Balkan art of this period. The frescoes at Melnik present many features of a transitional trend, uniting different versions of the new 13th century style formed on the basis of the Byzantine Comnenian artistic paradigm. The article discusses in detail the peculiarities of the coexistence of these artistic tendencies, as well as the place of Melnik among other coeval ensembles in which similar processes can be traced. This work is supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant 20-18-00294-P) and done at the Research Institute of Theory and History of Architecture and Town Planning — branch of the Central Research and Project Institute of the Construction Ministry of Russia.