Archaeologists have removed from under the collapse of the “plumage of angels” and “female face”

Scientists for the first time discovered and studied a large occurrence of frescoes of the XII century on the territory of the Yuriev Monastery in Novgorod

The location of the rarest frescoes of the 12th century was discovered on the territory of the Yuryev Monastery by specialists from the Novgorod architectural and archaeological team of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

As MK was told at the institute, the frescoes were knocked off the walls of the St. George’s Cathedral of the monastery, founded back in 1119, during repairs in the 1820s and taken out of the building.

Earlier, in 1990-2000, during excavation and archaeological work on the territory of the monastery, archaeologists regularly found single fragments of frescoes, but they could not find the place where the bulk of them were located.

One of them was discovered in 2014–2015 in a small pit (a vertically dug deep hole) under a construction collapse. From under the 19th century floor, tens of thousands of fragments of the original fresco painting were recovered. Hundreds of trays with lime fragments were transferred to the Novgorod State United Museum-Reserve. On the fragments, male and female faces, elements of clothing and ornaments, fingers and toes, plumage of the wings of angels and scaly armor of holy warriors were guessed.

To date, the first results of the study of frescoes have been obtained: the main pigments of paints and their elemental composition have been determined.

So, in the rich blue paint, which was used in ancient Russian paintings, one of the most expensive minerals by medieval standards, lapis lazuli, or lapis lazuli, was discovered. This mineral is mined in Afghanistan, in the territory of the Southern Baikal region and in Tajikistan in the Pamirs. Further research, perhaps, will make it possible to determine exactly which deposit was mined for lapis lazuli, which the ancient masters used for the paints of St. George’s Cathedral.

Archaeologists continued to look for frescoes around the monastery after 2015. In July 2022, archaeologists laid two pits to the east of the cathedral on the territory of the monastery lawn. In the pit, which was located outside the temple fence of the XVIII-XIX centuries, at a depth of 60-70 cm from the modern surface of the earth, a new layer of building collapse with pieces of frescoes was found. All fragments differ in size: from small colored gravel to large fragments, on which whole faces or parts of them are visible.

Together with archaeologists, the museum staff removed more than 100 tablets with fragments of frescoes from the pit and handed them over to the Museum branch of the Center for the Restoration of Monumental Painting under the direction of Tamara Anisimova for further processing, conservation and study.

Most of the newly found fragments are mass material without visible images. Less than ten fragments contain murals, defined as fragments of a personal letter, and only two fragments made up one image – a woman’s face.

“This is the face of a young woman. Half of the high forehead is covered by a white headdress or bandage with deep greenish shadows, which makes up the upper part of the face; a fragment is broken under a thin nose with open nostrils. The lower part of the face has not yet been identified…,” said Marina Vdovichenko, scientific secretary of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The search for frescoes will continue.