Beram Travel Forum

Hi,

I looked today at the tourist info of Pazin regarding the Sv. Marija - to my astonishment the frescoes on their picture are 180 degrees off what I did see yesterday with my own eyes.

Did they made a mistake or the frescoes were re-painted?

Their picture:

http://www.tzpazin.hr/foto/dancemacabre.jpg

My pictures aren't uploaded yet, but believe my words... I am not drunk (yet!)
The colors do not match either - mine is closer to the reality, much less reds, more dark and more faded.

I imagine the photo was accidentally 'flipped' on the website.

Here's one the right way round:

http://istrianet.org/istria/towns/beram/beram1.htm

The colour variation is most likely related to how the photos were originally processed (or processed when uploaded to their sites). This one is quite different to the first link:

http://www.istrapedia.hr/ita/646/danza-macabra/istra-a-z/

I really cannot imagine that there would have been total repainting! :-)

Thanks, that's the correct direction but the color is still off. I found the little church by word of mouth, by the way. Going to Beram, than looking for the lady in the house #38 who had the keys and taking her to church in my car.

Was very nice.

By the way - there is also a fresco there with "Glagolica" writing, I just did not make picture of it.
The frescoes definitely need some restoration to be done, the colors do fade.

To bad, you did not visit Makedonija this year, I went to Kastoria (Greece) from there for a day. Should finish my Kastoria page - the frescoes I did see in Kastoria had definitely some issues, suffering perhaps from the economic downturn. Hope, more money will be allocated and Beram would need some money as well.

Thanks anyway for the link!

You're welcome, Gyuri. Macedonia was simply impossible given work commitments and timings. Which was indeed a pity.

I agree that the picture has been reversed. My page shows how it was in 2004 : http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/e7401/.
The colors are more faded and match with what you are saying George. I understand that nothing has changed since 2004 and that you have still to look for the lady with the key. Let it remain like that as long as possible! I am looking forward for your Beram page.

Oh, no! The colors are MUCH worse now than on your page.
The direction is the same. The background: I was tired enough to take the Canon 5D with me, so I took the Panasonic GH-1 out of the car, much faster to operate. Inside was very dark - and I had to use a Yupiter-3 lens (made in 1962!) which has 1.5 aperture. It came out surprisingly dull - but THAT was also the way I did see, the lens did not lie.

For general view I used the native Leica/Panasonic 7-14 lens (corresponding to 14mm-28mm) and the color was still the same as with the Russian lens. So it's not the lens :(

Sounds to me as if there has been no preservation or restoration, so the colopurs will continue to fade.

It is a great pity but I entirely understand that the money for such projects is not always readily available. Ultimately, when money is tight other things must take priority.

Reminds me of the story with Albanian churches in Kastoria. That is much worse now than in Beram because the last thing Greece will do in 2011 is to take care about Muzaka family foundation.

And if the money is there - often the things go bad like it happened in Ócsa (Hungary) and Pec Patriarchate. I wasn't in Patriarchate yet but from the pictures I did see it looks totally off, with a lot of money being thrown away and things made only worse.

Same in Albania with the paintings in Voskopojë/Moscopole/Moskopolis/Moskopolje. In some of the churches, the inner paintings were in fair conditions while the outer, under the gallery, were already heavily damaged and required a lot of restoration.