Gradište Monastery

Gradište Monastery is in Buljarica, Montenegro,^[1][2] not far from Petrovac na Moru.^[3] Like Reževići Monastery, Gradište was originally a medieval inn of the old Serbian Empire Zeta. It also was affiliated with Kosovo's Visoki Dečani Monastery. Founded in 1116, Gradište was mentioned in a document from the time of King Milutin in 1307. The monastery buildings comprise a dormitory building and three churches.^[4] The three churches are St. Nicholas', built in 1610; the Assumption of the Holy Mother of God, whose frescoes date from 1620s; and Saint Sava's, both the former built in 1855 and the latter built in the early 1500s.^[5][6] Saint Sava Church houses an iconostasis painted in 1864 by the Greek icon painter Nicholas Aspiotis, and an unusual painting of St Christopher with an animal head.^[7][8]

The Church of St Nicholas contains frescoes painted in 1619–1620.^[9] The cycle is a historiography of St George, and contains scenes identified in 1960 by Veljko Đurić as Saint George Confessing Christianity, The Whipping of Saint George, and The Torture of Saint George on a Wheel.^[10] At the time of Đurić's work, the frescoes were uncleaned. Later cleaning and study after the frescoes were damaged in an earthquake revealed a further scene, identified by Bojan Popović as Deliverance from the Limestone Quarry.^[11] Aleksandar Čilikov identified two more scenes from the Saint George cycle that were too fragmented to identify.^[12]