Portal:Bulgaria/Selected article/5

Hristofor Zhefarovich (original Cyrillic Христофоръ Жефаровичъ) was an 18th-century South Slavic painter, engraver, writer and poet and a figure of the Illyrian movement.

Born in the end of the 17th century, Zhefarovich descended from a priestly family from Dojran in Macedonia and became a monk himself. As a highly-educated and well-learned vagrant monk he painted and traded with books, icons and church plate.

Zhefarovich's work of greatest importance for the South Slavic Revival was his Stemmatographia published in Vienna in 1741. Stemmatographia was illustrated by Zhefarovich with copper engravings and black and white drawings. It contains 20 images of Bulgarian and Serbian rulers and saints, as well as 56 coats of arms of Slavic and other Balkan countries with descriptive quatrains under them, regarded as the first example of modern secular Bulgarian and Serbian poetry. Stemmatographia had a crucial influence on the Bulgarian (particularly Paisius of Hilendar) and Serbian Revival and made a great impact on the entire Bulgarian heraldry of the 19th century.