Jan. 31 - “One of the major ideas [behind the History Nights] is to continue our class work and to stimulate further debate,” said History Professor Evelina Kelbetcheva after the first lecture in Spring  2009, entitled “Myth-Making in Arts: The Case of the Boyana Church.”

Clemena Antonova, art history and theory professor, delivered a speech  on the frescoes of the Boyana church, the Orthodox church on the outskirts of Sofia included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. About 30 students and professors attended the lecture on January 26, in the Red Room.

“This site is one of the most complete and perfectly preserved monuments of east European medieval art,” the official UNESCO description says.

Antonova said that some nationalistic-minded Bulgarian historians even claim that Boyana frescoes represent the beginning of the Renaissance and a “purely Bulgarian” work of art. She said that Boyana church is an example of Bulgarian school of painting of the mid-13th century, and illustrated with photos that the frescoes have features of cultural influence of the Byzantine Empire. “They [the frescoes] are proto-Renaissance, but I don’t believe they were the first,” Antonova clarified.

The History Nights series will continue on February 16, when Dr. Nikola Theodossiev, Assistant Director of the American Research Center in Sofia, will speak about the latest archeological discoveries in Bulgaria on Kelbetcheva’s invitation.