The book deals with the corpus of icons painted by Serbian artists between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, after the conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Before the outbreak of the last war in the Balkans, the icons were housed in Serbian Orthodox churches in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Many of the icons published here have been destroyed, damaged, or moved to supposedly safer places. Serbian Icons from Bosnia-Herzegovina is beautifully illustrated, featuring almost completely unknown works of art. These icons offer major evidence of the transformation of Serbian sacral art from post-Byzantine to Baroque.
Rakić treats the icon not as a mere artistic product, but as a lively reflection of conditions in which the Serbian Orthodox Church and its icon-painters survived and worked under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. These icons were a major source of encouragement and support to people who endeavored to preserve their ancestral faith and awareness of their ethnic and cultural roots during many centuries of foreign occupation.
Rakić treats the icon not as a mere artistic product, but as a lively reflection of conditions in which the Serbian Orthodox Church and its icon-painters survived and worked under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. These icons were a major source of encouragement and support to people who endeavored to preserve their ancestral faith and awareness of their ethnic and cultural roots during many centuries of foreign occupation.
