BELGRADE, January 24. /TASS/. Serbia’s National Assembly has passed the law on Friday paving way to exchange seven paintings of renowned artist Nicholas Roerich for page 166 of Miroslav’s Gospel, the oldest Serbian manuscript, with Russia, the Serbian Culture Ministry’s press service said on Friday.
"At the suggestion and initiative of the Ministry of Culture and Information, the Serbian National Assembly passed three bills at today’s meeting, including the ‘law on confirming the agreement between the government of Serbia and the government of Russia to hand St. Petersburg’s Miroslav Gospel to Serbia and paintings of Nicholas Roerich to Russia," the statement reads.
Earlier, Serbian Culture and Information Minister Vladan Vukosavljevic told TASS that the swap can take place in early 2020, however, both national parliaments need to approve it. According to Vukosavljevic, return of the cultural relic to Serbia will be "one of the most important moments" for the country.
The agreement to exchange these treasures was reached by Belgrade and Moscow during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Serbian capital on January 17. The agreement itself to hand a page of the medieval Cyrillic manuscript back to Belgrade was inked during the then Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s Belgrade visit in October. The document also states that Serbia will hand over seven early Roerich paintings to Russia.
Before the recent developments, the issue of returning the page from the ancient Cyrillic manuscript to Belgrade had been discussed for decades. As for Roerich’s paintings, they simply vanished between 1941 and March 2017 when a TASS correspondent discovered the masterpieces in Serbia’s National Museum.
Miroslav’s Gospel
Miroslav’s Gospel was written in approximately 1180. It is Serbia’s oldest manuscript written in Cyrillic, which is housed at the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade. In 2005, Miroslav’s Gospel was added to the UNESCO Memory of the World list. Lately, a new tradition emerged when Serbian presidents swear on the gospel’s copy to take the oath of the office when inaugurated.
Written by deacon Gregory, the manuscript was commissioned by Prince Miroslav Zavidovic, a brother of Stefan Nemanja, the founder of the Nemanjic dynasty. Later, the Gospel was named after Prince Miroslav. In about 1845, Archimandrite Porphyrius (Uspensky) discovered the manuscript at the Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos. He extracted one page from it and brought it to Russia.
Roerich’s paintings
The fate of the paintings by Nicholas Roerich in question, discovered in the collection of the National Museum of Serbia, remained unknown since the moment Nazi Germany attacked Yugoslavia in April 1941. The seven paintings on the list are Berendej Village (1921), Holy Guests (1923), Church Bells Tolling (1919), Burgustan on Caucasus, St. Sergius of Radonezh (1922), and two costume sketches for Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Snow Maiden (1921). One of the paintings on the list was reportedly Roerich’s gift to the Belgrade Museum. The others had been brought there for a personal exhibition. World War II prevented the exhibits’ return to Russia.