Kappadokia Bölgesi Göreme Vadisi Azize Barbara Kilisesi Resim Programına Yeniden Bakış

The article focuses on the Church of St. Barbara in the Göreme Valley in Nevşehir, Cappadocia. Today the church is within the borders of the Göreme Open Air Museum which is a cluster of many churches, refectories and additional units. The church is unique with its architectural plan and elaborate nonfigurative elements in red ochre. Painted panels of a secondary phase do not cover up this red paint decoration but they are on the already-vacant parts of the naos. Remarkably, almost all motifs differ from each other in detail or in form. Furthermore, certain compartments of the building are reserved for certain motifs. Thus, it becomes clear that ruddled motifs and compositions can be named as parts of a ‘red ochre painting programme’ in which they are hierarchically arranged in the naos and each of them gain their specifical meaning thanks to the detailing. Such a programme must have been comprehended by the first users and accepted and vindicated by the painters of the second layer. The only church exactly similar to the Church of St. Barbara in its plan type is the Çarıklı Church in close proximity in the same museum. It is interesting that the churches exactly similar in architecture but totally dissimilar in painting programme are coexistent in the Göreme enclave on whose institutional organization so little is known. Still, that the panel paintings did not cover up the detailed red paint decoration indicates that the ruddled programme was approved or appreciated by the hierarchical order of the Göreme enclave. This study intends to examine the nonfigurative repertoire of the region, the architectural plan of the church and intends to shortly evaluate iconoclast and iconophile way of thought on figural imagery. By doing this, the study aims to comment on the meaning the church had in the Göreme circuit, and to hypothesize on the congregation who used the church.