Takovo Uprising
Paja Jovanović, 1894
Image not available: work still under copyright
The Takovo Uprising is the title of two nearly identical oil paintings by the Serbian realist Paja Jovanović. Both show Miloš Obrenović, the rebel leader, urging his countrymen to revolt against the Ottoman Empire at the Takovo assembly, the moment usually linked to the start of the Second Serbian Uprising. The larger version was painted in Paris in 1894 and shown in Belgrade the following year; the smaller one was made for King Alexander, who had also commissioned the first. To prepare, Jovanović studied genuine costumes and weapons of the period, travelled to Takovo and sketched the church and the great tree beneath which Obrenović addressed the people. Some local faces were drawn from life and appear in the scene. Obrenović stands on a large stone, raising one arm toward the sky and waving a red-cross banner on white, a design close to that of the Petrović-Njegoš dynasty. The crowd responds with raised swords, and a priest blesses him. Apart from a warmer palette and slightly more expressive figures in the second version, the two are very similar. Widely reproduced in lithographs and school materials, the image became a familiar emblem of Serbian national history.
- Painter
- Paja Jovanović
- Date
- 1894
- Dimensions
- 160 × 256 cm
- Museum
- National Museum of Serbia, Belgrade
- Depicts
- Takovo Uprising