Published in Relations between History and Literature in Ancient and Medieval World

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2011_02_11.pdf

Painted in 1295 by the Greek painters Michael Astrapas and Eutychios, the fresco of the Virgin’s Death (Koimesis) in the church of Panagia Peribleptos in Ohrid, Macedonia, highlights the main events described by the apocryphal stories on the death, the burial, the resurrection and the assumption of Mary, reinterpreted by the theologians and the hymns’ writers. This mural painting integrates in a diachronic development the scenes of the Virgin’s farewell to her friends, the coming of the apostles on clouds, the death, the funeral and the burial of Mary, including the episode on the attempt of desecration, the punishment and the conversion of a Jew named Jephonias, as well as the Virgin’s assumption, a subject performed for the first time in art. This article tries to explain and to illustrate the iconographic elements contained in this mural painting, analyzing them from the perspective of three apocryphal texts on the Mary’s death and assumption. Through such analysis we would highlight the direct and essential influence of certain Literature (apocryphal) in the creation of certain History, understood at the same time as History of Art (iconography) and History of Religions (dogmatic).