Andrija Raičević: life and works

Andrija Raičević (Tolac, a Herzegovinian village, Ottoman Empire, c. 1610 – Peć, Ottoman Empire, after 1673) was a Serbian icon painter and miniaturist who worked during the Ottoman doings of the Balkan Peninsula.

Raičević undertook commissions for the Patriarchate of Peć and went to Bosnia and Herzegovina to paint icons for the iconostasis in the Church of the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel in Sarajevo. He is noted for having painted Saint Nicholas in an abstract but established form. His icon is not influenced by Western art; St. Nicholas is presented in the Byzantine art style of the twelfth century and those that followed suit. All of his commissions came from the Patriarchate (Peć) or from high-ranking Serbian officials.

The Monastery of the Holy Trinity of Pljevlja, also known as Vrhobreznica, was the largest rewriting center (Scriptorium) in Montenegro during the time of Ottoman rule. In the monastic brotherhood of the Holy Trinity, some of the most important achievements of Serbian manuscript literature from the Ottoman epoch were created. John the Exarch’s Hexameron (a 15th-century Russian translation) and Cosmas Indicopleustes’s Christian topography, hand-copied by Gavrilo Trojičanin in 1649 and next illustrated by painter Andrija Raičević, were a remarkable and significant accomplish of miniature painting in the seventeenth century. Raičević was a relative of Mojsije, the abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity. Over time, these two works in the similar connection became especially recognizable by Raičević’s wonderful illustrations. Today, Andrija Raičević’s works are upon display in the Museum of the Serbian Orthodox Church and Regional Museum of Pljevlja (Zavičajni muzej Pljevlja).