The Wheel of Life at the Church of the Nativity of Christ in Arbanassi Revisited

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Abstract:

The article examines the image of “Wheel of Life “ at the Church of the Nativity of Christ in Arbanassi, painted in the 17th century – the earliest known representation of the topic in Bulgaria. The theme of the Wheel of Life, which is connected with the idea of the transience of human life, is well-known in the Balkans and especially in Bulgaria and Romania in the 18th and the 19th centuries, such as the famous image of the Monastery of the Transfiguration (Preobrazhenski manastir) near Veliko Turnovo, which is the work of the great Bulgarian revival artist Zachari Zograf. The question of the stages of the human life has been studied since the antiquity through citations of a series of ancient authors, and, moreover, an attention is paid to the influence of the Mount Athos over the religious and cultural life in the Balkans and more specifically over the iconography of the scene of the Wheel of Life. The image at the Church of the Nativity of Christ in Arbanassi, however, is distinguished for its originality and for that reason it is of particular interest for the researchers of the post-Byzantine period art. The human life is represented as consisting of 9 stages and it is difficult to find parallels to other similar images in the Balkans or to the philosophical conceptions, presented in the written sources.

Keywords:

monasteries, Wheel of Life, Byzantine art, Bulgaria, Ottoman period, Arbanassi, Nativity of Christ.

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