Newly discovered portraits of rulers and the dating of the oldest frescoes in Lipljan

Abstract

On the facade of the church of the Presentation of the Virgin, in Lipljan, the damaged depictions of two rulers were discovered under a more recent layer of fresco mortar. The depictions can be identified as portraits of the Serbian king and the emperor Stefan Dusan (1331-1355) and his wife Jelena. That provides the basis for the more reliable dating of the original wall painting in the interior of the church. For their part, the stylistic characteristics of that expressionistic painting suggest that the original Lipljan frescoes came into being around the mid-fourteenth century. Probably, they were executed by the same workshop that did the frescoes in the Church of St. Peter near Unjemir in Metohia, not very far from Lipljan.