Saint James the Persian at Staro Nagoričane

A red silk cap, its crown drawn up to a low point and its brim of fur pulled down almost to the eyebrows, gives Saint James the Persian an appearance that a viewer might not expect to meet among the martyrs of a Byzantine church. The full-length figure belongs to the frescoes of the Church of St George at Staro Nagoričane (Nagoričino), painted by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in 1317–1318. It stands on the south-west pier of the naos, in the left-hand part of the face it shares with the Apostle Peter. The cross held against the chest identifies him as a martyr. The rest of his costume, including the cap, the broad embroidered collar and the heavy mantle, belongs to the dress of a man of rank.

Michael Astrapas and Eutychios, Saint James the Persian, 1317–1318. Detail of the fresco on the south-west pier of the naos, Church of St George, Staro Nagoričane.

The church owes its present form to the Serbian king Stefan Uroš II Milutin, and its painted decoration was completed in the year 6826 of the Byzantine era, that is, 1317/18. On this pier the painters had little room to work with. How they fitted a standing figure into a narrow vertical field without making it look cramped is perhaps the first thing the fresco has to teach.

A Full-Length Figure on a Narrow Pier

James stands frontally, and the composition is built almost entirely on vertical lines. His right hand is raised in front of the torso, where it grips the shaft of a slender cross drawn in thin pale strokes against the red of the tunic; the thumb rests along the shaft while the fingers curl around it. The left arm is lowered and remains out of sight beneath the mantle. Nothing projects sideways. Through this economy of gesture, and through the mantle, which falls naturally over low, sloping shoulders and then drops in soft, deep folds towards the hem, the figure is adjusted to the shallow surface of the pier. The belted tunic beneath repeats the same descent.

These long folds do much of the work. In the greyish-violet mantle the painters cut darker channels between broad lighter ridges, and at the figure’s left side (the right of the image) one deep shadow runs almost the full height of the visible drapery, holding the edge of the composition like a pilaster. The upright bearing of the saint follows from the cloth before it is read in the body.

Within this largely symmetrical arrangement, the slight turn of the head and the glance in the opposite direction animate the figure while leaving it steady and calm. Behind him the ground is a strong blue, worn in places to a paler, mottled surface, against which the ochre halo and the warm colours of the costume stand out sharply.

Court Dress in the Fresco of Saint James the Persian

The cap is the most distinctive element. It is a round silk head covering in the same red as the tunic, with a conical crown divided into planes of lighter and darker red, so that the facets catch the light along crisp ridge lines. Around its lower edge a thick band of fur comes down over the forehead; the painters rendered it in ochre and brown with short parallel strokes that suggest the texture of a pelt without describing individual hairs.

Over the shoulders lies a wide embroidered piece in light ochre-gold, patterned with spiralling stems that close into roundels, each enclosing a dark stylised blossom. Its lower edge carries a band of circles above a row of white pearl-like dots. The neckband of the tunic, in pale blue, repeats the motif of scrolling stems with flowers, here confined between two rows of pearl-like dots. This ornament of stylised tendrils and blossoms recurs in the decoration of the church. Repeated on two parts of the same costume in different colours, it binds collar and neckband into a single decorative zone just below the head.

The tunic itself, now heavily abraded, is red, with scattered white losses across the chest and a paler, almost pink area where the surface has worn thinnest. Against it the dark mantle, the luminous collar and the red cap compose an aristocratic image. The cap and the fur, together with the epithet written beside the halo, appear designed to mark Saint James the Persian as a foreigner of high station, and it is this combination that gives the figure its slight air of the exotic against the blue field.

The Head: Modelling, Hair and Halo

Seen closely, the face is a long oval, framed by the fur brim above and by the hair, which falls in soft waves behind the shoulders and leaves the features entirely free. The right ear (on the viewer’s left) emerges from the hair. The nose is long and straight, its ridge lit by a narrow highlight that runs from the brows to the tip; the mouth is small, with a full reddish lower lip beneath a drooping moustache. At the chin, the short beard divides into two small points.

Detail of the head: the fur-trimmed silk cap and the modelling of the face, with part of the Greek inscription naming James, Church of St George, Staro Nagoričane.

The modelling is clear and controlled. Greenish shadow tones show through in the hollows of the eyes, along the cheeks and on the long neck, while the lit areas are built up in warm ochre flesh tones with touches of pink on the cheeks and lips. The heavy upper lids and slightly arched brows give the expression its gravity, though the overall mood remains serious and agreeable, without severity.

Paint losses, although numerous, are mostly small. They cluster on the saint’s right cheek, in the beard and around the chin, with further flecks on the forehead and in the hair. Larger damaged patches appear in the blue ground, especially at the upper left. The halo, a broad ochre-yellow disc closed by a dark contour and an outer white ring, has survived in comparatively good condition, and its plain surface throws the head forward.

Name and Epithet in the Greek Inscription

The inscription is painted in white Greek majuscules on the blue ground and is distributed around the halo. At the upper left stands the abbreviated Ἁ(γιος). At the upper right the name follows as ΙΑΚΟΒ, with omicron in place of omega. Lower down, on either side of the shoulders, the epithet is split between ὁ Π(έ)ρ, with an abbreviation mark at the left, and CIC at the right, two lunate sigmas flanking an iota. Read together, the phrase gives ὁ Πέρσις, “the Persian”, in the spelling with iota for eta that was common in the period.

The language deserves notice. The dedicatory inscriptions of the church recorded by the Maps of Power project of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, that of 1313 at the western entrance to the narthex and that of 1318 in the interior, are both in Slavonic, while the saint’s name here is written in Greek. Within the same building, the painted labels of the figures and the texts that record the foundation thus speak different languages.

The Persian Courtier and His Martyrdom

The costume becomes intelligible through the saint’s Passion. According to the account retold by the Mar Yakub monastery in Syria, of which he is the patron, James came from an illustrious Christian family in Persia and rose to the highest honours at the court of the Persian king Yazdegerd. Favoured by the king, he abandoned his faith; his mother and wife then broke with him by letter, and he returned to Christianity, which he confessed openly before the ruler. The punishment chosen was to cut his body apart joint by joint, and he was finally beheaded. From this manner of death derives the Latin epithet Intercisus, “cut in pieces”. His martyrdom is commemorated on 27 November in the Byzantine calendar.

The fresco presents Saint James the Persian as a courtier, wearing the signs of the rank he once valued and holding the cross that records how he relinquished it; the torments remain outside the image. Whether the painters intended the contrast between the fur-trimmed cap and the martyr’s cross to be read in exactly these terms cannot be established, yet the two elements, set one above the other on the central axis of the figure, are the poles between which the image is constructed.

Michael Astrapas, Eutychios and the Church of St George

The building in which the figure stands has a longer history than its decoration. An older church existed on the site, and the upper part of the present structure was raised on its ruined walls in 1312/13 under King Milutin (r. 1282–1321), as the Slavonic inscription above the western entrance records; that inscription also names Queen Simonis and an abbot called Andonij, which implies a monastery beside the church at the time. The result is a cross-in-square church with five domes, barrel and groin vaults and a semicircular apse. The earlier fabric remains clearly visible, particularly on the north side.

The painting was carried out under a later abbot, Benjamin, and the interior inscription dates its completion to the year 6826, which corresponds to 1317/18. The painters are named as Michael and Eutychios. On the south-west pier their Saint James the Persian shows, on a small scale, the qualities that the whole programme demanded. The figure is adapted to its architectural support, with drapery carrying the structure of the body; the costume is treated with an ornamental precision that leaves the head its prominence, and the face is modelled cleanly enough to remain legible from the floor of the naos.