Zahari Zograph: A portrait |  print |
To place this remarkable 19th century artist in perspective, one has to consider that he never left Bulgaria; that he never saw a single art gallery; that the word "art" in a Western European sense was something he had only vaguely heard of; and yet he became one of the most prolific and original artists of his age, the product of innate talent and spiritual vision.
Born in 1810 in Samokov, a small town at the foot of the Rila Mountain, he was the son of a well-known mural painting family. But his father died young and so Zahari set off at the age of 10 with his elder brother to earn a living in churches and monasteries. The work would have been traditional, painting the classic icons for the iconastasis or restoring earlier murals.
In 1840, Zahari was commissioned to paint the new church at Batchovo and here for the first time, other than in the portraits of donors, one can see the subjects dressed in contemporary clothes. At the Last Judgement, the condemned women, standing ,eyes agog ,on the side of the River of Fire, are all dressed in the latest Plovdiv fashions of the time. Oblivious to her impending fate, one of the ladies is setting her hat straight so that she will look her best! In the same mural, Zahari has painted some female nudes of perfect anatomical proportions. Since it was highly improbable that any woman would have posed as an artist's model in those days in Bulgaria, there is a mystery as to why they are so accurate.
His imagination surely stemmed from the Revelation of St John the Divine for how else could he have envisaged " a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads" in " a sea of glass mingled with fire": or " locusts like horses arrayed for battle: on their heads were crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces; their hair like women's hair; and their teeth like lions' teeth" and "the heads of the horses were like lions' heads and fire and smoke and sulphur issued from their mouths".
At Rila, he was the first artist to introduce typically Bulgarian landscapes of fields and small houses as opposed the allegorical landscapes of medieval times. His own self portrait also breaks the mould and must be judged as a bold statement that he was prepared to accept responsibility for his work.
My favourite aspect of his work is the flowing decorative and floral designs he uses on the lower friezes and the ornament of garlands and leaves on doors, arches and windows. These came from the designs of country carts, which were richly decorated with bunches of flowers and garlands of leaves.
His last known work is on Mount Athos, executed around 1852. The following year, he returned to Samokov to nurse his beloved sister-in-law, Hristiania, and succumbed himself to the same epidemic.
Ones abiding memory of his work is the incredible imagination he had, married to marvellous sense of colour and line. His compositions are, on occasions, tongue in cheek – the ladies of Plovdiv had failed to donate any funds to the monastery! - but Zahari never failed to deliver the message of damnation, almost more effectively than Hieronymous Bosch or the other medieval Dutch and Fleming schools. This brown haired young man, with huge wide apart eyes, must have caused quite a stir amonst the monasteries, arriving on his horse, saddle bags crammed with paints and brushes. There has never been another Zahari Zograph; he broke the mould, others merely followed.
Bulgaria
- Sofia, the chestnut city
- The road to Rila
- Zahari Zograph: A portrait
- South to the Border
- The Monastic Heartland
- Vassil Levski: A portrait
- The Battle of Shipka Pass
- The Ancient Kingdom
- Monk on a Meteora