Certificate of Appreciation / Passion Project
📜 Certificate of Appreciation for Donations to a local church in Mostar.
The church is devoted to St. Stefan the Tall and his mother, St. Eugenia of Serbia.
🤴 Stefan ruled Serbian lands at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century. Despite being a “despot”, he was also a diplomat, legislator, ktetor, patron of the arts, poet, and one of the founding members of the Order of the Dragon.
👸 Eugenia, better known as Princess Milica, held the throne after the death of her husband Lazar at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 until her son came of age. Besides being a diplomat and a ktetor, she was also a writer, leaving behind multiple religious poems and prayers.
The design I created as my contribution to the church features an intricate geometric frame inspired by medieval orthodox ornaments.
🦅 In the top corners, I depicted double-headed eagles, stylized to resemble the eagle relief that Stefan’s father and Eugenia’s husband, Emperor Lazar, placed in Hilandar, a Serbian monastery in Mount Athos, Greece.
The center of the frame features a rhombus with three beams of light, representing the Holy Trinity. At the bottom of the composition is the church, with the river Nerevta and Herzegovian karst hills behind it ⛪
The title is hand-lettered, mimicking medieval Cyrillic calligraphy.