The Dečani Frescoes

Beside the valley of the Dečanska Bistrica river, in Kosovo, about twenty kilometers south of the city of Peć, stands a monastery of Orthodox monks known as the Visoki Dečani monastery.

It was built on the orders of the Serbian king Stefan Uroš, in 1327. Its basilica is made of five blocks under one enormous dome. So far there is nothing out of the ordinary to point to.

But look carefully at the frescoes painted inside, dated to 1350, and certain details begin to trouble you. Take the best preserved fresco of them all, a scene of the crucifixion, and study it slowly.

Up in the corners of the scene, above the cross, there are two shapes that do not belong to any ordinary painting of this kind. Each one looks like a small craft, and inside each craft there seems to be a figure, leaning into the work of steering it.

Could they be ships of some kind? Because if they are, then it is plain enough what is happening: the figure in the first craft is chasing the one in the second. A painter in 1350 set that down on a wall, in a quiet monastery, and left it for us. Is it some kind of prophecy? Or the memory of something that had already happened?