Liturgical vessels from XIX century Serbian Orthodox churches: Pictorial symbolic decoration of Eucharistic chalices

Abstract

Within the corpus comprising the visual culture of Serbian churches in the XIX century, an important and rarely studied place belongs to liturgical objects. Their visual and symbolic decoration corresponds to their special liturgical purpose. When observed as objects of communication, liturgical vessels are semantically complex, since they mediate between the sacred and the believer; they contain and convey the truths of the church in service of its holiest mystery – the Eucharist. The most distinguished place among these objects belongs to the chalice, whose plain surface demands pictorial decoration that is almost catechetical in character. Such images are in direct communication with both the clergy and the congregation, who together receive the holy mystery of the Eucharist from it. In this sense the iconographic repertoire used in the pictorial decoration of this most important liturgical vessel of the Orthodox Church was gradually conceptualized, formed, and ultimately fixed in the XIX century.