Samokov School

Samokov School is the name given to the painters, woodcarvers and engravers of Samokov, a mountain town south of Sofia, who from the late 18th century through the 19th supplied icons and wall paintings to churches and monasteries across the Bulgarian lands under Ottoman rule. The label is used when a picture comes from that tradition but cannot be given to a single named painter.

The school grew out of a few families. Its founder is usually named as Hristo Dimitrov, an icon painter from the nearby village of Dospey, whose sons Dimitar Zograf and Zahari Zograf became its best-known masters. With other Samokov painters they decorated the main church of the Rila Monastery in the 1840s, and the Dospevski, Obrazopisov and Valyov families carried the craft on through the century. Saint John of Rila, the hermit who founded that monastery and is venerated as Bulgaria's patron saint, was among their most frequent subjects.