Art

Art in medieval Bulgaria developed within two empires whose territories shifted across the Danube region and the Balkans. The First Bulgarian Empire lasted from 681 to 1018; after a period of Byzantine rule from 1018 to 1185, the Second Bulgarian Empire emerged and endured until the Ottoman conquests of the late fourteenth century. Across these different political settings, rulers, church institutions, and wealthy donors supported works that expressed religious belief and authority. The surviving evidence ranges from monumental stone carving and decorated buildings to icons and lavish books.

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Art and changing religious settings

The First Bulgarian Empire adopted Christianity under Boris I in the ninth century, and royal patronage promoted Slavic worship, clergy and books. These changes strengthened the place of churches and books in cultural life. Rulers supported the training of clergy and the production of religious writing, while church building created new settings for images and decoration. The Second Empire inherited and reshaped traditions that had also developed through the interval of Byzantine rule.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, painting associated with the capital Tarnovo formed a leading current in Bulgarian art. It drew on Byzantine artistic traditions, including developments of the Palaeologan period, while developing its own approaches to portraits, colour, and church decoration. Its works served religious purposes, but they also made patrons, rulers, and their relationships to the church visible.

Stone and ceramics in the First Bulgarian Empire

The Madara Rider is a rock relief generally dated to the beginning of the eighth century. A horseman spears a lion while a dog follows behind. Nearby Greek inscriptions record events associated with rulers including Tervel and Omurtag. Carving the scene high on a cliff gave royal display a commanding place in the landscape, although the rider’s precise identity and the commission’s circumstances remain debated.

Stone carving also supplied decoration for buildings. At Preslav, sculptors worked in marble and other stone, producing animals such as griffins and birds, as well as plant forms and geometric patterns. Such work adorned public and religious buildings. The city’s workshops also produced ceramics, while pottery from settlements and burial grounds shows that wheel-made vessels were part of everyday use. Two-storey pottery kilns were in use from the ninth century. Contact with the Byzantine Empire after Bulgaria’s conversion brought new forms and decorative choices into local ceramic production.

More elaborate ceramic plates, made from white clay known as kaolin, were used to decorate churches and palaces. Their painted designs included geometric and plant patterns, birds, and images of the Virgin Mary, saints, and apostles. Workshops around Preslav made tiles for major buildings, and examples also reached places beyond Bulgaria. Some tiles bear Cyrillic or Glagolitic letters on their backs. A particularly striking find from the monastery of Saint Panteleimon near Preslav is an image of Saint Theodore assembled from twenty ceramic tiles. Ceramic decoration thus brought religious figures into architectural settings as well as into smaller objects.

Church murals and their patrons

Church painters used both fresco and techniques applied after the plaster had dried. In fresco, pigment is worked into fresh lime plaster, so painters must complete an area while the surface is still suitable. Work on a dry surface uses a binder to hold pigment to its support and allows later additions and detail. Medieval murals could combine methods within the same painted programme.

Church murals were arranged across walls, vaults, columns, arches, and apses in horizontal bands following church conventions. Saints commonly occupied the lowest band, standing on a high painted base that could imitate coloured marble. Patrons helped determine which saints appeared, alongside the overall religious theme. Scenes from the Passion of Christ and the feast cycle could sit above the saints, while images of Christ as Pantokrator, or All-Ruler, often occupied a dome and the Virgin Mary with the infant Christ appeared in the apse.

Warrior saints were especially common in the Tarnovo tradition. Saint Demetrius of Thessalonica, regarded as the patron saint of the Asen ruling dynasty, was a familiar subject. Donors, known as ktitors, could be portrayed in the church entrance hall, or narthex. Their portraits preserve images of medieval Bulgarian rulers and nobles. At the Boyana Church, paintings dated to 1259 show Emperor Constantine Tikh Asen and his wife Irina, as well as the noble Kaloyan and his wife Desislava. Individualised faces and carefully rendered clothing give these portraits a marked sense of presence.

Church painting was not limited to standard religious scenes. In the chapel of the Hrelyo Tower, images include the life of Saint Ivan of Rila, David’s psalms, musicians, and a dance. The latter scenes offer details of clothing and daily life in the fourteenth century. Archaeological fragments also show that some palaces and public buildings had richly painted walls.

Icons and the painted image

Icons were sacred images used in worship and prayer. They could be painted on wooden panels or made in other materials, including the ceramics associated with Preslav. An Eleusa image shows the Virgin and Child in an affectionate embrace, with their faces close together; Eleusa names this iconographic type. The large double-sided Poganovo icon, generally dated around 1395, places a vision of the prophets Ezekiel and Habakkuk on one side and the Virgin with Saint John on the other.

Illuminated manuscripts and courtly display

Monastic and courtly support for literacy made manuscripts another setting for religious art. The Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander, produced in 1355–1356, reveal how writing, illustration, and royal display could come together in a single book. The monk Simeon wrote the text for the ruler; the manuscript contains the Four Gospels and additional material, including markings for passages used in the liturgy. It comprises 286 parchment folios, each about 33 by 24.3 centimetres, and its pages contain hundreds of miniatures.

The illustrations vary in scale and placement. Many are small narrative scenes arranged like horizontal friezes within the text, while others occupy larger areas or entire pages. The compositions follow Byzantine manuscript traditions and include scenes from the Gospel narratives. The manuscript’s opening royal portraits show Ivan Alexander, his wife, and their children wearing crowns and halos and carrying sceptres. The images link the ruler’s family to Christian authority, while the emperor’s ceremonial clothing draws on the visual language of Byzantine imperial dress.

Simeon is named as the scribe, but the painters are not identified. Differences in style indicate the work of several artists, probably including at least three principal hands. The book’s original red leather cover over wooden boards survives, decorated with stamped patterns and a griffin. A richer metalwork covering, probably ornamented with gold, gems, and pearls, has disappeared, though holes in the binding show where its fittings were attached. After Tarnovo fell to the Ottomans in 1393, the manuscript was taken to Moldavia, carrying an example of a Bulgarian court commission beyond the empire’s end.