The Žiča Altar Screen Icons

The altar screen mosaic icons were ordered and installed on a new reconstructed altar screen in the Žiča Monastery in 1993. The sketches made by a painter, Mladen Srbinović were approved by a committee consisting of eminent experts. Furthermore, The Serbian Patriarch Paul gave his blessing to the icons. However, soon after they were put up, there was an outcry and controversy ensued, which ended in the removal of the “controversial” icons and with them being replaced with one produced in the Žiča iconography workshop. The aim of this paper is to show the objective or subjective reasons for such a sequence of events: the departure from the canon and the instructions given in artistic manuals or the social environment unprepared to accept the otherwise expressed spirituality.