Angela Drenovac Analysis of a Visual Image Depicting Expertise 19.04.

2013 Professor Denise Comer

D1

Medieval Towns in Serbia

Introduction For this assignment I have chosen a picture of the reconstructed St Lazars town from the XIV century since my area of expertise are Medieval Towns in Serbia. A paper is divided into three parts: an analysis of the image, its connection to the other medieval towns in Serbia and a brief conclusion. Analysis of the image of the reconstructed St Lazars town The subject of the image is a reconstructed medieval town from the XIV century. It is mostly in the cool hue of brown and grey. The town is centered on the image, but it stretches from the upper left corner to the lower right corner. In the upper right corner there is an R in

D2 red, which represents the initial of the image maker. Under the R, in the background of the image, there is a river with Cyrillic inscription West Morava (that is the name of the river). Below the reconstructed town there is a Cyrillic inscription which means St Lazars Town. The town in the image appears three-dimensional and rests on some kind of platform. There are walls all around the town in the shape of an oval, that gives the town a sense of unity, with watchtowers along the wall. There are fifteen watchtowers five of which are roofed. The lengths between them are unequal. Two parts of the wall in the lower right corner, between the three watchtowers, are a bit different from the rest. They make a square form with the two walls inside the fortress, with the three watchtowers in the three corners, and the main three floor roofed watchtower in the fourth corner of it. The main watchtower is the biggest one and it is in the inner part of the fortress. Around it there is a moat, also in the inner part of the fortress. To the right of it, around the small watchtower that stands in the third corner of the abovementioned square, there is a wall that stretches to the outside of the fortress and forms a kind of oval. In the inner part of the wall, to the upper left of the main watchtower, there is also a small rectangular wall, with two small buildings, one of which is to the left, and the other one to the right. Across them there is an orthodox church in a Byzantine style. It has two domes, two choiroffices, one to the left and one to the right and an altar in the central part. Inside the fortress, there are a lot of houses. Majority of them are rectangular in shape, but five are hexagonal. They are scattered throughout the town and do not form a regular and symmetrical form. The majority of them are houses for dwelling, but some of them are supposed to be stables or craftsmen workshops. Across the main watchtower there is a two floor building, which is the biggest in the whole town. It has visible windows just on the first floor, while the ground floor is without windows. As for windows, watchtowers have three visible each, while the main one has only one on the each floor. St Lazars Town as a representative of Serbian medieval towns St Lazars Town (other names: Krusevac, Saren Grad, Aladza Hisar) resembles the other medieval towns in Serbia. It is made of unequal-shaped stones. The stone walls are about a meter and a half thick.

D3 St Lazar or Lazar Hrebeljanovic was the Serbian tsar who ruled in XIV century, until 1389, when he died in the battle of Kosovo. He was a founder of the fortified town of Krusevac in central Serbia near the river West Morava. The town itself is ruined now, but there are lots of remnants and historians and architects make an effort to reconstruct it, and that is why this image was made. There were about 230 medieval towns in Serbia, 31 of which have no remnants and 14 of which have just foundation left. There are about 20 of them with just a few remnants, and about 163 whose remnants are visible, and few of them have very well preserved fortresses or walls, or both. Each medieval town, whether in Serbia or in any other country in Europe, shows persistence of its dwellers and foremost of its builders. How could they build such long lasting fortresses with such an antiquated technology? Maybe they were finding their Sweet Spot (Coyle 2009), but rather that kind of job requires a lot of hard work, as Geoffrey Colvin says in his article What it Takes to Be Great. The builders of these towns must have put a lot of effort in their job. They had to work hard and stubbornly in order to get their work done, and they had to believe that their work would be useful to them and their descendants.

Conclusion Each time I see a medieval town that has survived for centuries I can not but admire the medieval men for their ability, persistence and endurance, and I have to think about the time we live in with all the unnecessary things which we wish and buy in our day to day life, which will not last long enough to serve our descendants as well.

D4 Image Source Obnovimo Lazarev grad (Lets restore Lazars Town) <https://www.facebook.com/ObnovimoLazarevGrad?fref=ts>, April 20th, 2013.

References List over the medieval towns in Serbia <https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BA_%D1%82%D0%B2

%D1%80%D1%92%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0_%D1%83_%D0%A1%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%98%D0 %B8>, April 20th, 2013.

Coyle, Daniel. "The Sweet Spot". The Talent Code. New York: A Bantam Book, 2009. Pdf format. Colvin, Geoffrey. What It Takes to be Great. Fortune 19 October 2006.