The Bachkovo Monastery
The Bachkovo Monastery, erected in a magnificent locality along the reaches of the Assentisa River (29 km South of Plovdiv), ranks second after the Rila Monastery both with regard to size, and to architectural, artistic and literary significance.
Its history was a turbulent one. It was founded by the Grigorii Bakuriani in 1083. a special decree stipulated that it was to be a self-governing body inhabited by some 50 Georgian monks at the most. Almost immediately after its foundation, the monastery turned into a wealthy landowner, its properties stretching as far as Salonika.
In 1344, Tsar Ivan Alexander established his rule over the Rhodopes, populated the monastery with Bulgarians, and generously donated to it. His full-length portrait stands next to the figures of Bakuriani and his brother Apassii in the narthex of the upper floor of the ossuary - the only building remaining from the mediaeval monastery after its destruction in the 16th century, standing alone in the woods today, apart from the new "complex".
The monastery's biography is inevitably reflected in the architectural face of the ossuary. Its general idea is foreign to Old Bulgarian art, and is clearly influenced by Syrian and American-Georgian building. At the same time, the construction of parallel rows of stones and bricks was unknown there, and that is the construction method of Pliska and Preslav. The preserved murals on two floors are a valuable document of an age that has left us with fairly few artistic testimonies. Painted during the 11th and 12th centuries, in all likelihood by two artists, the murals are the fruit of an aristocratic art, of the monumental-spiritualistic style of the time when the theocratic system of Byzantine imperial rule was most powerful: stern and absorbed figures, foreign to all worldly things, forceful and severe drawings, enamel gleaming colour.
Spared during the first wave of enslavement, Bachkovo Monastery became the "prison" of the last Bulgarian Patriarch Euthymius, who was exiled here, where he continued his great literary work. The wave of Mohammedanization destroyed the monastery, but by the end of the 16th century it was fully restored. The large refectory was built in 1601, the main church of the Assumption - in 1604. Thanks to the special benevolence of the Greek Patriarchate, the church became the only monumental (12 x 22 m, cruciform, three-apsides) cultic building in the Bulgarian lands prior to the National Revival period. The figures depicted in the church's first murals (1643) - probably the work of Athos painters - stand apart from the then prevailing democratic artistic trend; they are characterized by solidity, immobility and schematism. An interesting proof of the cultural level of the monastic brotherhood are the murals in the refectory displaying the upright figures of the ancient philosophers Aristoteles, Aristophanes, Diogenes, David, Sophocles and Anaximenes.
Bachkovo Monastery was one of the most significant spiritual and literary centers of the National Revival period. It was a frequent venue of mass pilgrimages. In 1837, the decision was taken for a new church to be built: St. Nikola, which entered the annals of Bulgarian art. Its murals, completed in 1840, were the first documented work of the great National Revival artist Zahari Zograph. This is where you will also find the first self-portrait of the Bulgarian artist: above the heavenly regions of Doomsday, the first true genre compositions and realistic landscapes, the first paintings with a frank social content (the presentation of Plovdiv notables among the sinners in hell), influenced by concrete topical reasons (for example, the refusal of these notables to open a Bulgarian school in their town).
The murals, old icons from different periods, the manuscripts and incunabula with artistic facings, as well as the many objects linked with church crafts, turned Bachkovo Monastery into one of the richest galleries of Bulgharian art.
