The church All Saints, village of Leshani – vicinity of Ohrid

The church dedicated to All the Saints, with frescos from the middle of the 15th century, belongs to the class of modest, rustically built single-nave temples with a three-sided apse on the outside. The fresco-paintings in the interior have kept the year of their origin and the name of the founder, all of this with gratitude to the Russian research worker Viktor Grigorovich, who in the spring of 1845 visited this monastery.

In the following years the monument underwent certain damages and the mentioned text was lost. But from the writing we find out that this temple was built with the effort of Nicola Bozikev from Ohrid during the archbishop Nicola – 1452.

The churches with this name are rare. In Ohrid and its vicinity it is the only one. All Saints are regarded as the patrons of the dead, and thus it is supposed that this church served exclusively to the cult of the dead members of the monastic brotherhood: the church is surrounded by graves.

Almost all of the fresco-paintings in the interior are preserved: the images of the Holy Trinity – on the arch roof: “The Prepared Throne” – around which hover Seraphs and thrones, “The Father of the days” surrounded by seraphs, angels and tetramorphs, and above the altar space Jesus Christ from the Ascension has been painted.

The simplicity of the completeness and the easiness in the presentation in Leshani give out a painter who with his preparation significantly surpassed his given assignment. The fresco-painter in the Leshani’s temple appears not only as a mature person and temperamental creator, but as well a successor of a particular current, which characterizes the monuments of the Ohrid area, beginning from the sixties of the 14th century.

G. Angeličin - Žura

About the churches in Macedonia

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