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Markovic has sojourned several times in Chilandar. With silent prayers and talks pleasing to God with Chilandar monks, he went through the eight centuries of Chilandar absorbing all that which will be of use to him to transpose into painterly memory. In the monastery walls, cells and other Chilandar rooms he found already forgotten Chilandar jars, copper cauldrons, candlesticks, censers, and numerous other ethnographic and liturgical objects which he was later to transmit onto canvasses. Among these painterly revived objects there is also Czar Dusan's cup, a priceless exhibit from the Chilandar treasury. To express his artistic vision of Chilandar he has also used discarded old Chilandar windows, doors, doorposts, capitals, parapet panels, thus making an unusual symbiosis of the movable and the immovable.

Chilandar was and is an inspiration to many artists, particularly to painters. However, Miloje Markovic’s painterly vision of Chilandar and its eight centuries is idiosyncratic. From small and almost forgotten objects (most of them no longer in use) he tells Chilandar history. He does it in a specific artistic way. Each one of the paintings has three or more Chilandar symbols brought to form an esthetic whole. Large canvasses, reduced, with subdued centuries, have a fresco effect. Copying has been peaceful, objects have been painterly materialized to perfection with conspicuous liturgical detail bringing to recollection and reminding one that Chilandar is a home of prayer and holy of holies. This still life in painterly telling by Miloje Markovic resurrects our forgetfulness and brings the Chilandar past closer to us. That is his prayer and his lepta (contribution) which he gives to the eight centuries of Chilandar existence.

Slobodan Mileusnic, Art Historian, Director of the Museum of Serbian Orthodox Church

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