Ángel Blanco. Desde Heraldo de la Resurrección hasta Portador de Fortuna... El Ángel Blanco. Desde Heraldo de la Resurrección hasta Portador de Fortuna. Comercialización del Arte Religioso en la Serbia post-comunista

Abstract

The murals in temples Christian Orthodox have always had the following objective: display the liturgical order and complete the religious experience of sacred time and
space. Outside the temple and church, believers could maintain contact with these stories
sanctified and holy, through the use of icons that have been an inseparable part of the Christian life always after the period of iconoclasm. In the communist era, the great successes
of the art of Orthodox Christianity were observed outside the strict religious context. The
change in attitude toward the visual arts influenced their marketing, largely neglected originating dogmas in which this art was based. An interesting fact is that the Serbian Orthodox
Church significantly contributed to this process of marketing of orthodox art products.
This work will focus around a specific case –the case of the white angel– a world famous fresco, located in the Mileševa monastery (southwestern Serbia). In recent decades, this composition has undergone serious “reinterpretations” in which his main theme –the display of
the empty tomb of Christ after his resurrection– has been marginalized for highlighting the
white angel figure, through reproduction of only a section of the composition.
This case presents a testimony of several levels of current social and cultural processes in
Serbia: bears witness of a long transitional process often supposed inventions and falsifications of national and religious traditions, testifies also on special forms called new religiosity,
which is considered both a phenomenon both locally and globally, and last but not least,
testifies to the secularization of the practices and orthodox faith.