Religion

Portrait of Serbian clergy in Mitropolitan of Karlovci (1690-1790).

This paper focuses on representative portraits of Serbian clergy in Metropolitan of Karlovci in Habsburg Lands (1690-1790). Serbian patriarchs and metropolitans with senior church representatives were the intellectual elite of Serbian ethnie at the time. They were building politics of personal representation by forming own public image and influencing its perception through arranging their residences and making sure their image is present in important places under their juristidiction. Independent portrait in early modern Serbian art is building and promoting the desired public image of bishops, incorporating particular conceptual basis and iconography and having strategically important places of display. Based on earlier cataloguing work, known and preserved portraits, new historiographical insights into Serbian cultural history of the 18th Century and unpublished archival materials, this paper focuses on portraits of high clergy at three levels: it determinates the number and regularity of the portrait display in the enteriors of the Metropolitan of Karlovci; analyses original functions and symbolism of the interiors and the role the portaits had in them; outlines the politics of presentation of Serbian clergy and alanyses the role of portrait in it.