are ‘devout imagination’ and ‘seeing through images ... limba si cultura/44_ene vasiles… ·...

Are ‘devout imagination’ and ‘seeing through images’

coloured by national identity? The Romanian case1

Elena ENE D-VASILESCU

Keywords: Church iconography; icon and fresco painting; Byzantine sphere

of influence; Romanian Church; Saint Parascheva of the Balkans; St. Catherine

Monastery on Mount Sinai

One way in which ‘devout imagination’ can manifest itself – especially in an

Orthodox Christian context as that which Romania presents from a religious

perspective – is through people’s attitude towards saints, or rather to a particular

aspect of the process of canonization: how people choose some among them to be

elevated among the ranks of the sacred. We shall touch to a certain extent on this

issue at the end of the paper, after explaining some details of how ‘seeing through

images’ concerns holy persons2. Now we shall focus on Church iconography (wood

panel icons and wall-paintings) because this not only gives a concrete form to

devotion, but offers a more direct answer to the question in the title of this paper.

The Byzantine elements in Romanian ecclesiastical art

Among the countries involved in the game of influence and communication

regarding icon and fresco painting is Romania, which has inherited a church art of

Byzantine lineage. This country entered the “Byzantine Commonwealth” in the

fourteenth century (Obolensky 1971), when in the empire ruled the Palaeologue

dynasty. What is the role that Byzantium played in the formation of Romanian

church art in terms of teaching and guidance? In what way did communication

worked after Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453 in the area previously under

the Byzantine sphere of influence, including Romania? Our responses to these

preliminary inquiries will facilitate answering the question in our title here.

The religious art of the fourteenth century was characterized by a more

expressive tendency than what monumentality favoured by Macedonean family

displayed. The rise of the Romanian medieval states, and the canonical organization

of the Orthodox Church in each of them led to the development of a specific

Romanian style of icon and mural painting with distinctive characteristics that

‘grew’ on an initial Byzantine base. This peculiar style was a combination of

1This text was presented at Ertegun House, University of Oxford, on the 11th of May 2013 on the

occasion of an event entitled ‘Romanian in Oxford: language, culture and history’. University of Oxford, Great Britain. 2 There are many books on icons and among them we can mention those by Robin Cormack, Maria

Vassilaki, Elena Ene D-Vasilescu, Cornelia A. Tsakiridou, Mary Cunningham, and Angeliki

Lymberopoulou.

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canonical Byzantine guidance and many innovations. Later, elements from folk and

Western art were accepted in the liturgical art of the country.

But what were the characteristics of religious decoration in Byzantium itself?

There has been a long discussion in literature about many of its aspects, primarily in

regard to what was to be included in the definition of ‘Byzantine art’. That was so

because, in spite of the fact that the productions of the imperial capital,

Constantinople, were usually considered as the standard, the contributions from

dependent provinces of the empire – Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, and Egypt –

demanded an equal place within this definition. Those from the ‘Byzantine

Commonwealth’ (Russia and the Balkans) (Obolensky 1971), had also their claims

from this point of view. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the

artists used to travel or live as refugees as a consequence of frequent internal and

external conflicts (see for example Stephanos of Aila, “architect and craftsman”,

who went from Constantinople to Egypt, where he built the Monastery of St.

Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai [Weitzmann 1975: 82] and later, in the

fourteenth century, Theophanes [c. 1340 – c. 1410] the Greek – actually he was from

Crete since ‘the Cretan’ appellation is also used in his case – migrated to Russia: in

1370 he moved to Novgorod, and in 1395 to Moscow). Therefore, the question

concerning whether ‘devout imagination’ and ‘seeing through images’ are nationally

tinted is not at all new.

Otto Demus points out some aspects of Byzantine art which he considered

distinctive in comparison to Hellenistic art from which it evolved. His

characterisation summarizes the main opinions on this issue and we shall operate

with it here:

In Byzantine art, forms have become divisible and this divisibility is perhaps

one of the most characteristic and, from the Western medieval point of view, one of

their most useful attributes. This feature emerged firstly in technique and modeling,

when the continuous gradation or the illusionistic color patch technique of Hellenistic

painting was supplanted by a three- or four-tone system in which a medium tone is

modified by one or two darker and one or two lighter shades, all quite distinct and not

merging into each other; a similar principle dominated the representation of the

human figure, which was divided into its component parts, parcelled out, as it were,

and put together like model figures, with the joints clearly articulated and the

movements somewhat mechanized and overstressed. The same spirit of division and

articulation ruled Byzantine composition: the arrangement is simple, legible,

paratactic and quasi-geometrical; compositions can easily be taken to pieces, and

every one of their parts may be substituted by another. This enabled artists to express

a new content by applying minor adjustments to ready-made, traditional forms

(Demus 1970: 12–13).

His words seem to be illustrated by some icons, as for instance that in Fig. 1

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Are ‘devout imagination’ and ‘seeing through images’ coloured by national identity?...

Fig. 1 St. Archangel Michael, Curtea de Argeş Monastery,

1526, fresco by Dobromir of Târgovişte, 256x126 cm. Now in

the Museum of Romanian Art, Bucharest, Drăguţ, Romanian

Art: Prehistory, Antiquity…, vol. 1, illustration p. 386, caption

p. 3873.

But actually, I do not think that the first part of the above description (about

divisibility and interchangeability) has ever been an attribute of the Romanian style

of icon and wall-painting, if it ever was with respect to Byzantine art at all. In

support of my idea it is worth mentioning that some of the renowned iconographers

deliberately broke the canons, and this was socially accepted; the climax of this

process was reached in the second half of the nineteenth century with Nicolae

Grigorescu and Gheorghe Tăttărescu [both were icon-painters in their youth], but

earlier similar or even more radical such phenomena took place somewhere else (as,

for example, in the former Serbian kingdom – we can see an instance from 1422).

Fig. 2 a. Sfântul Gheorghe [St George], a fragment //

from the interior fresco by Nicolae Grigorescu, Agapia

Monastery; Diaconescu, Biserici şi mânăstiri ortodoxe,

illustrations and caption p. 146.

3 Vasile Drăguţ, Romanian Art: Prehistory, Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque,

Bucharest, Meridiane Publishing House, 1984, vol. 1.

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Fig. 2 b. The icon of Mother of God Pelagonitissa,

painted by Makarios, 1422, 135x95 cm (52 ¾ x 36 ¾

in.) Art Gallery, Cvetan Grozdanov, Icons and frescoes

from the treasures of Macedonia, the Secretariat for

Information of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia,

Skopje, 1976, Plate 6.

On the other hand, Demus pertinently remarks that,

[the] absolute distinctness of meaning is another of the attributes which

enabled Byzantine art to become the magistra Europae. Every representation, from

the simplest to the most complicated, compound image, had its specific message that

remained unchanged through centuries; and every image had a solemn grandeur

which made it a fit representation of the Holy (Ibid: 15).

Since the holy images are an important part of the Liturgy in the Eastern

Churches, and the Liturgy has come unchanged throughout the centuries, it is natural

for the images used during the Liturgy to have preserved the same meaning and to

convey the same message across all time; Fig. 3 a, b, c refer to both old and new

representations.

Fig. 3 a. The Virgin between St. Theodore and St

George, Encaustic, sixth century, 68.5x49.7 cm, Sinai;

Manafis (ed.), The Treasures of the Monastery of Saint

Catherine, Athens, Ekdotike Athenon, 1990, p. 138–

139 (Fig. 4).

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Fig. 3 b. Virgin Hodegetria and Child, Monastery of

Bistriţa, Vâlcea County; tempera on wood, 124x107

cm; 1513. Now in the Museum of Romanian Art,

Bucharest; Drăguţ, Romanian Art: Prehistory,

Antiquity…, vol. 1, illustration p. 381, caption p. 380.

Fig. 3 c. Icon of the Mother of God with the Child,

tempera on wood with a golden background, by Maria-

Magdalena Şerban; my own collection and photograph,

autumn 2002.

Eunice Deuterman Maguire and Henry Maguire underline the fact that in

Byzantium, “The very legitimacy of the holy image depended upon its adherence to

tradition and its supposed accuracy in reproducing the prototype” (Deuterman

Maguire, Maguire 2007: 158). Along the same lines, Oleg Ju. Tarasov shows: “In

the Byzantine tradition the requirement to adhere strictly to the ancient models that

were ‘revealed’ to the saints lay at the foundation of all religious art” (Tarasov 2002:

171). And, indeed, the “Byzantine canons” are still kept today in some countries

(certainly in Romania where, during my visits in churches undergoing painting, I

found the iconographers with a reprint of an eighteenth century Hermeneia

[Grammar book] written by Dionysius of Fourna (Săndulescu-Verna ed. 2000: 3) in

front of them. This Manual is partially based on traditional material written as early

as the tenth century (Idem).

Leonid Ouspensky underlined the fact that “Byzantine norms” are still

followed by modern iconographers and, as just mentioned above, what he said in the

beginning of the twentieth century (Ouspensky vol. III: 1992; Lossky, Ouspensky

1999) still holds true. In addition to the numerous examples from Romania, another

one is the famous and active school of iconographers in Sviato-Troitskaia Serghieva

Lavra [Holy Trinity Serghieva Monastery] in Russia, where the book Trud

Ikonopista [Iconographer’s Toil] –actually a Hermeneia – published in 1995

(Mother Juliania 1995) guides the icon painting in that monastery today.

But we have to repeat the remark made above: the typicon of Byzantine

church art has always allowed for creativity.

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The Romanian case

Discussing now the case in point, the situation of iconography in Romania, I

have proposed somewhere else a periodization of its artistic development in three

stages: fourth-fourteenth centuries, fourteenth-first half of the nineteenth century,

and the second half of the nineteenth century today (Ene D-Vasilescu 1999 a and

b).

I. The first phase in the development of Romanian iconography

We shall refer now to the first phase of Romanian iconography fourth-

fourteenth century. If we accept the idea of a first monastic complex at Basarabi, in

former Scythia Minor, today Dobrogea discovered in 1957 (Holubeanu 2008:

199235, 167168) – and most authors tend to do it (Holubeanu 2008: 199235;

Păcurariu Istoria Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, vol. 1 anul 1980) – the beginning of

religious docoration in the lands to the North of the Danube took place in the fourth

or fifth century. In Fig. 4 a, b, c we have reproductions of a few images from the six

small limestone ‘cave churches’ which seems to represent crosses and saints

(especially solders; this is, for exemple, the opinion expressed by Ionut Holubeanu:

Idem). In connection with these rock-cut churches there are smaller rooms. On the

walls of these rooms, in addition to inscriptions, there exist incised zoomorphic

motifs, horse-riders, ships, and – again – crosses and figures of saints, some of them

in prayer.

Fig. 4. a, b, c, d: Iconographic representations from the caves at Basarabi,

Holubeanu, “Reprezentările iconografice din complexul rupestru de la Basarabi și

semnificaţia lor”, in Cinstirea sfintelor icoane în Ortodoxie [Honouring the Holy

icons in Orthodoxy], Pl. 111 (photo/fig. 6 in the respective book) and Pl. Vl (photo

11/fig. 9 in that book).

Fig. 4 a. Unidentified saint (Basarabi –B4)

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http://www.crestinortodox.ro/diverse/69229-teoctist-arapasu-patriarh-al-bisericii-ortodoxe-romane


Fig. 4 b. Representations of graffiti type (Basarabi –

E3), Plate 111

Fig. 4 c. Basarabi – incised crosses in B4

Fig. 4 d. Râvna – various types of crosses (on a pillar

between pronaos si naos/nave), Plate 111

Vasile Drăguţ describes the decoration of the chapel hewn in the chalk hill at

Basarabi Murfatlar as follows:

Carved on the surface of the walls or moulded in reddish clay, the motifs

decorating these chapels (belonging to hermit monks) are astonishing in their

awkwardness and crude gaiety, in the way in which they comment synthetically on

realities. Spread at random over the chapel walls, the entire decoration – figure of

orant saints […], silhouettes of horsemen, stags and fantastic animals, Christian

symbols, scroll-like stems – bear the imprint of free, spontaneous, untutored

execution, a naïve art unfettered by canons. County churches outside the sphere of

direct Byzantine influence must have been decorated like this (Drăguț, Grigorescu,

Florea 1971: 9).

437


With respect to the point of view expressed in the last (two) lines of this

quotation, one can appreciate that there is a need for beauty transcending any culture

and the attempts here should be ascribed to that. It is to be noted that people felt

compelled to express that need in the place where they worship.

But there is another place – very close to Basarabi (sometimes the two

archeological places are referred to as one compound) which owns objects clearly

bearing the Byzantine mark on them. This is Niculiţel (close to the Roman

settlement Noviodunum, today Isaccea) where a church of basilica type was

discovered in 1971 (Păcurariu 1991 vol 1: 88, 166). It was dated to the same period

as Basarabi caves (fourth-fifth centuries). Historical traces from Niculiţel

reproduced in literature date only from the ninth century – as the cross in fig. 5.

These are clearly of Byzantine – very probably of Constantinopolitan – make.

The scarcity of archeological remains from the period before the tenth century

is due to the fact that between the seventh and eleventh centuries the waves of

migratory tribes passed over the territories of Romania, and it is supposed that this

fact had an impact on the art in the churches. The only surviving examples of this art

are metallic liturgical objects (Ibidem: 5152). Among the nomadic people who

came into the territories along the Danube were Bulgarians. They were officially

Christianized in 864 (when the tsar Boris became Mihail).

Otherwise, in the sixth century a strong church organization at the south of the

Danube, with many bishoprics, helped further the conversion of the Daco-

Romanians by the missionaries who went to the north of the Danube. So, the

bishopric at Tomis was strengthened, and some erudite theologians such as St John

Cassian (Păcurariu 2000: 64) and the monk Dionisius Exigou (the Young?) (Ibidem:

43–44) left from there to take the Eastern Christianity to the West. In their native

lands, Christianity spread throughout Wallahia, Banat, Transylvania, and Moldova.

From 889 onwards the ‘Byzantine – Slavic rite’ [Orthodox Christianity] was

introduced in Bulgaria, and was then practiced in the Roman Empire of the East (as

the inhabitants of it called it; the appellation ‘Byzantine Empire’ came into use much

later). [To this ‘rite’ the Slavic written language ‘Cyrillic’ (a creation of mainly two

monks from Thessaloniki – Cyril and Methodius) was attached, and soon the Old

Slavonic language became the language of many Orthodox churches. It was used in

the Romanian religious texts (and also in the chancelleries) up until the end of the

seventeenth century] (Ibidem: 49–50).

Fig. 5. Reliquary double cross, nineth

century; probably made in Constantinople

for a cleric; Văetişi and Stanciu (eds.),

Arta de tradiţie bizantină în România,

Noi Media Print, Bucharest, 2008, p. 49.

438


The next proofs of possible Byzantine influences in Romanian territories are

from the ruins of a ninth century church and the remains of an eleventh century

cemetery chapel at Dinogeţia, also in South of Romania, 8 kilometers east of Galaţi

and 2 kilomete from the village Garvăn, since the archeological site goes sometimes

under the name Dinogeţia-Garvăn (Barnea http://www.unibuc.ro/ro/

cd_alebarnea_ro; accessed May 2013. They have traces of mural paintings with

geometric and vegetal motifs (Drăguț, Grigorescu, Florea 1971: 810). Drăguţ

mentions an ensemble of mural painting preserved in the Hermitage Negru Vodă in

Argeş County, Wallachia, built in 12154.

But it is possible for a country to have a coherent artistic life only when that

country has achieved a certain administrative centralisation, a certain degree of

economic prosperity, and independence. In the fourteenth century this was the case

with the Romanian lands. Basarab the First (+ 1352) unified the pre-state formation

in the Romanian lands (voivodates and knezates), and obtained the independence of

the new state. Under those circumstances, a more organised Church than before,

dependent on Byzantine Patriarchate, developed. During the rule of Nicolae

Alexandru’s (13521364), the son of Basarab, the organised Church was

recognised by Byzantium (in 1359). With this, a consistent development in

liturgical art began – one that was synchronized with its counterpart in Byzantium.

II. The second phase in the development of Romanian iconography (it

lasted between the fourteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century)

The fourteenth century Palaeologan Church art of Byzantine Empire was

characterized by a more expressive tendency than in the previous two artistic

periods5. In wall and icon painting this means that the holy figures were depicted

with a more “human” appearance than was earlier the case, their faces showing

individual traits and feelings. The following examples, which display a late

Byzantine element, are the most representative of that period in Romanian

territories. In Romania, among the surviving achievements of the first half of the

fourteen century there is The Hermitage Corbii de Piatră, Argeş County.

4 Petre Baron, Getta Mărculescu-Popescu, Florin Andreescu et. al., România. Schituri, Mănăstiri

Biserici. Roumanie. Ermitages. Monastères, Églises. Romania. Hermitages, Monasteries, Churches

(Album in Romanian, French, and English), Bucharest, Editura Royal Company [Royal Company

Publishing House], 1999, p. 27. 5 Panagiotes Andreou Michelés considers such a feature (‘humanisation’) to be specific ‘the third

phase of Byzantine art’. (The other two phases for him are: the ‘Macedonian’, sixth century-ca. 1056,

and the ‘intensity’ phase, ca. 1056-ca. 1261). Michelés, An Aesthetic Approach to Byzantine Art, B. T.

Batsford, London, 1964.

439


Fig. 6. Interior of The Hermitage Corbii de

Piatră, Argeş County, first half of the

fourteenth century; Baron, Mărculescu-

Popescu, Andreescu et. al., România.

Schituri, Mănăstiri Biserici. Romania.

Ermitages. Monasteres, Eglises. Romania

Hermitages, Monasteries, Churches (Album

in Romanian, French, and English), Royal

Company Publishing House, Bucharest, 1999,

both illustration and caption p. 276. (Corbii de

Piatră is described in literature in terms of

‘attributed to’ Basarab the First).

Drăguţ also shows that in 1311 an anonymous painter adorned with mural

paintings the foundation erected by the Cânde Princes in the village of Sântămarie

Orlea (Hunedoara County, Transylvania), Fig. 77. In the same church, a

monumental image of the Archangel Michael surrounded by an ornamental frame

made of semi-palmettes recalls the numerous similar images in churches from the

south of Italy, for example, in St. Apollinare, Ravenna.

Fig. 7. The Discovery of the Holy Cross, detail, St

Helen, Sânta Mărie Orlea (Sântămărie Orlea),

Hunedoara County, painted in 1311 by an anonymous

painter; Drăguţ, Romanian Art: Prehistory, Antiquity…,

vol. 1, illustration and caption, p. 121.

The church Sf. Nicolae din Curtea de Argeş, founded by Basarab the First

and painted in 1350, exemplifies more clearly the synchronization of local

ecclesiastical art with the iconography of Byzantium art I mentioned above (Figs. 8a

and 8b prove this).

6 Petre Baron, Getta Mărculescu-Popescu, Florin Andreescu et. al., România. Schituri, Mănăstiri

Biserici. Roumanie. Ermitages. Monastères, Églises. Romania. Hermitages, Monasteries, Churches

(Album in Romanian, French, and English), Bucharest, Editura Royal Company [Royal Company

Publishing House], 1999, p. 27. 7 As mentioned in the first chapter, traditionally, i.e. until very late in the history of Orthodoxy an

Orthodox painter does not sign his work. This is the general rule but the name does occasionally appear

in the customary inscriptions above the church’s main door, or in other inscriptions within the

churches.

440


Fig. 8 a. Communion of the Apostles [Împărtăşania

Sfinţilor Apostoli], Biserica Sfântul Nicolae [St

Nicholas Church], Curtea de Argeş, 1350; Drăguţ,

Romanian Art: Prehistory, Antiquity…, vol. 1,

illustration and caption p. 117, commentary p. 116

Fig. 8 b. The Prayer of St. Anne and the

Annunciation to her; mosaic from Chora Monastery/

Kariye Camii, c. 1310, Constantinople.

In Drăguţ’s opinion, the frescoes in the Royal Church in Curtea de Argeș built

by Basarab

evidence an early assimilation of artistic solutions typical of the Paleologan

style, although there are also numerous traces of a simplified form of representation

peculiar to provincial workshops (Drăguț vol. I 1984: 117).

On the east wall of the naos, over the two niches of the sanctuary there is the

image of the Deisis, while the Annunciation, as in the church of Sântămărie Orlea,

is on both sides of the sanctuary. On the south wall and partially on the vault, images

from the Christological cycle are preserved, of which the Nativity, The Presentation

in the Temple, and the Resurrection of Lazarus are especially remarkable.

Obolensky emphasises the presence of the Byzantine element in Romanian

icon painting. He also gives a concrete example from Wallachia, the same example

Drăguţ used:

Curtea-de-Arges, completed between 1364 and 1377, was attached to the court

of the Wallachian princes and was built as their place of burial. Its frescoes are the

most complete cycle of Byzantine Palaeologan painting on Rumanian soil. Several of

them, it has recently been proved, were directly inspired by the mosaics of the Kariye

Camii in Constantinople8.

8 Dimitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth. Eastern Europe, 5001453, London,

Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p. 353. Current research is trying to establish whether this monastery is of an

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Drăguţ accepts this, but at the same time he highlights the capacity for

assimilation and selection of Romanian icon painting, which is: “[i]n point of style

[…] an art of synthesis which turned to good account both the expressive elements

peculiar to Byzantine-Paleologan painting and to the Italian one” (Drăguț vol. I:

116). This means that Romanian Church art has never limited itself to borrowing

styles, techniques and motifs, but has instead selected them in such a way as to suit

the sensibility of the Romanian artists and worshippers. Moreover, it has displayed

openness not only to Byzantine art, but also to other sources of inspiration, such as

Western art or local folk art. Voinescu underlines the same idea, that despite a

context in which “Byzantium was the age-old substratum on which grew the art of

Romania”, the iconography of the country was “remarkable from the earliest period

for its originality and its exceptional gift for interpreting, processing, and

synthesizing”9. The paintings in the church mentioned above by Obolensky as an

example (at Curtea de Argeş), supports this idea. This church is decorated with

frescoes, “which, though observing Byzantine tradition, are very much alive and

personalized, and thus much closer to Giotto’s art than to the rigid mannerism of the

Greek masters” (Drăguț 1984 vol. I: 116). Drăguţ affirms that in addition to its

artistic merit, St Nicholas’ Church in Curtea de Argeş was considered by the

theological standards of the time to be not only an act of faith, but first and foremost,

an act of secular authority destined to strengthen the idea of independence, because

“the setting up of the Metropolitanate of Wallachia in 1359 was also part of the

effort made by the first Basarabs to ensure the full authority of their young state”

(Drăguț, Grigorescu, Florea 1971: 12).

This effort towards freedom in the artistic field, in parallel with the political

struggle for independence, was to be expected. Drăguţ shows that:

…the Romanian feudal high nobility did not hesitate to call upon foreign

artists in order to see its ambitions for pomp and ceremonial satisfied as rapidly as

possible. We are still in a period of assimilations, but these assimilations prove both

daring and fruitful. Adopting a Constantinople Byzantine architectonic style the

Greek inscribed cross of a complex type the Princely Church at Curtea de Argeş

raised this to monumental proportions never met with in Byzantium, while ensuring

noble spatial harmony and perfect balance of the architectural masses. Rivalling the

artistic value of the great building they decorate, the interior mural paintings

constitute the largest and finest iconographic ensemble of the early period of

Romanian medieval painting (Ibidem).

In general, during the Middle Ages, the Byzantine religious tradition in

Eastern Europe became more homogeneous. The slight variations of icon type,

noticeable at the outset of that period in the churches and monasteries of the

different Eastern European areas, are far less significant than the underlying unity of

formal structure and spiritual message they conveyed. The differences became even

less perceptible after 1300, when a new current of asceticism and spirituality, which

had again originated in the leading monasteries of the Byzantine Empire, further

even earlier date (cf. Voinescu, Teodora Voinescu, “The Post-Byzantine Icons of Wallachia and

Moldavia”, in Kurt Weitzman (ed.), The Icon, Evans Brothers, London, 1982, p. 374. 9 Voinescu, idem, p. 373.

442


strengthened the ties that bound together the various local branches of Eastern

European monasticism (Obolensky 1971: 294295).

In St George church in Streisângeorgiu, Hunedoara county, Transylvania, the

layer of painting from 13131314, applied over an older one, is still characterized by

an extreme sobriety, and even rigidity; fig. 9. When the second fresco was painted, it

was still very early in the development of fresco painting, and also perhaps the older

layer influenced the style of the second. This church has the oldest wall painting of

Byzantine tradition in Romania integrally preserved. The building, a foundation of

Prince Bâlea, dates from the first years of the fourteenth century, but stands on the

ruins of a church from the twelfth century. In this church, even later icons (from the

sixteenth century), as those from the iconostasis representing the Virgin Hodegetria,

Christ the Saviour, and St Nicholas (in half-figure, surrounded by saints), follow the

early Byzantine conventions in their great ‘austerity.’

(Here the oldest mediaeval Romanian inscription in Cyrilic, from the fifteenth

century, has been preserved. It mentions not only the name of the priest, Naneş, but

also that of the icon-painter, Theophilus. Drăguţ analyses the painting work in

Streisângeorgiu, and shows that with only basic means and ‘energetic’ brush-strokes

Master Theophilus realised a masterpiece in mural painting, the best surviving

example of which is the Last Judgement on the west wall of the church. From the

older layer of painting in the church, some well preserved fragments display a

soldier (in the sanctuary), and the figures of Saint Basil the Great and Saint Nicholas

(on the walls). The figures visible today in that church, for example those from the

votive painting from 1408, are depicted in a manner that is somehow ‘atemporal’

(Fig. 9)10

.

Fig. 9. The votive painting from 14081409

when Streisângeorgiu Church was rebuilt: the

Kneaz Cândea Laţcu, his wife Nistora, and other

members of the family. Originally the church

was painted by Master Teofil in 13131314;

Păcurariu, Istoria Bisericii Ortodoxe Române,

2000; the illustration (black and white), on the

third page from the special section following p.

64, the explanation on p. 83.

Drăguţ suggests that these paintings could be a proof of an old local tradition

which “can be traced back, through Southern Italy, to distant Cappadocia, where the

iconography of Basilian churches offered similar solutions” (Drăguț vol. I 1984:

116). In the cases of Streisângeorgiu and Sântamărie Orlea, the mural ensembles

are strongly marked by tradition, “a fact which is due to some older monastic rules,

replaced in the new princely foundations by a freer interpretation, aulic in character”

(Ibidem: 117118).

10 Păcurariu, Istoria Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 2000, p. 83, and also the illustrations on the third

page from the special section following p. 64 (Fig. 7 from that page).

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According to the monograph The Romanian Church (Antonie Plămădeală,

Biserica Ortodoxă Română. Monografie-Album, Bucureşti/Bucharest, Editura

Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române/Publishing House of

the Biblical and Mission Institute of the Romanian Orthodox Church, 1987), only

the paintings in the church of Santa Marie Orlea are visibly influenced by Byzantine

art (and they were executed by a painter from south of the Danube), while the other

paintings from the beginning of the fifteenth century in Transylvania are the original

works of Romanian iconographers. This means that in that period there was an

authentic Romanian art with specific characteristic; the so-called Transylvanian

School of Painting which emerged in close connection with the political and military

development of the state formations in that land11

.

In Wallachia the fresco from 1391 in Cozia Monastery in the pronartex

depicting the Holy Trinity is also very well realised and proportioned Fig. 10 ,

and the same are the frescoes from the apse and nave painted in the same year.

Fig. 10 a. Sfânta Treime [The Holy Trinity], fresco in

pronaos, Cozia Monastery, 1391; Vaida, Mânăstirea

Cozia. Ieri şi astăzi [Cozia Monastery. Yesterday and

Today], Editura Episcopiei Râmnicului şi Argeşului,

1983, p. 157.

Fig. 10 b. St Elijah Being fed by the reaven in the

dessert; fresco in the pronaos of Cozia Monastery, 1391;

Văetişi and Stanciu (eds.), Arta de tradiţie bizantină în

România, Noi Media Print, Bucharest, 2008, p. 59.

11 Antonie Plămădeală, Biserica Ortodoxă Română. Monografie-Album, Bucureşti/Bucharest,

Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române/Publishing House of the Biblical

and Mission Institute of the Romanian Orthodox Church, 1987, pp. 161208.

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Fig. 10. c. The Church and the

frescoes in the nave and the apse,

Cozia Monastery, 1391;

Diaconescu, Biserici şi mânăstiri

ortodoxe, illustrations and

caption p. 78.

Dimitri Obolensky affirms that Moldova “developed a fully articulate

artistic tradition only in the second half of the fifteen century, in the reign of Ştefan

cel Mare [Stephan the Great]” (Obolensky 1971: 353). However he acknowledges

and gives examples of earlier Moldavian churches from the time of Alexandru cel

Bun which are frequently recorded in historical documents as possessing ornamental

objects, Byzantine manuscripts, and icons commissioned by the rulers of the

Byzantine Empire. Indeed the most remarkable works in icon painting in Moldova

date from the second half of the fifteenth century and from the sixteenth century. An

example which is not very famous, but that is still beautiful and well-preserved is the

frescoe in Stephen the Great’s paraclis [side chapel] in Bistriţa Monastery, Suceava

County from 1498. In this historical Romanian province, the idea of independence

(from the Turks who were the enemy of that time) is expressed in the art of the

Church, to cite one example, in a small panel supposedly from the casket which

enshrines the relics of St. John the New who was martyred for his Christian faith

(Fig. 11).

Fig. 11. Sfântul Ioan adus în faţa Episcopului [St John

Brought Before the Diocesan], The Church of Sf. Ion cel

Now [St John the New Church], Suceava town and

county, small panel, perhaps from the coffin that

enshrines the relics of St John the New, fifteenth or

sixteenth century, tempera on wood, 26x28 cm. Now in

the Museum of Romanian Art, Bucharest; Teodora

Voinescu,“The Post-Byzantine Icons of Wallachia and

Moldavia”, in Kurt Weitzman (ed.), The Icon, Evans

Brothers, London, 1982, illustration and caption p. 384.

445


The casket may have been brought to Suceava in the fifteenth or sixteenth

century12

. The panel is

rendered in exquisite pictorial images. The main group is depicted in tones of

deep red and creamy white against a mild dark brown background. It is a unique

example of narrative painting, which corresponds to the skilfully chiselled plaques of

silver gilt framing the reliquary that still contains the remains of the legendary martyr

(Vasile Drăguţ, Romanian Art: Prehistory, Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance,

Baroque, București/Bucharest, Meridiane Publishing House, vol. 1: 374–375)

But what makes that era renowned are the long-revered external mural-

paintings of the sixteenth century. The external walls of churches had occasionally

been decorated with pictures in several Balkan countries before that time, but the

practice of covering the entire external surface of the walls with elaborate cycles of

paintings seems to have been an innovation of Moldavian artists. The earliest

example of this technique in Moldova is at Arbore monastery (1503). It was

followed by the external decorations of St George Church in Suceava (1522), and of

the churches in the monasteries of Humor (1535), Moldoviţa (1535; Fig. 12 a, b),

Voroneţ (ca. 1547; Fig. 13), and Suceviţa (ca. 1585).

Fig. 12. a, b. Exterior frescoes of Moldovița Monastery’s church, 1535; ibid.,

illustration and caption p. 34.

12 Teodora Voinescu, idem, p. 384 “The Post-Byzantine Icons of Wallachia and Moldavia”, in Kurt

Weitzman (ed.), The Icon, London, Evans Brothers, 1982, St. John of Suceava (St John the New) was

tortured and killed by Turks, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, in Cetatea Albă fortress (Ak-

Kerman in Turkish) on the Nister River, which was under Turkish domination for a while, because he

did not want to deny his Christian faith. In the book Romanian Art (p. 282) Drăguţ considers that the

Tartars killed the saint. St John the New was originally from Trebizunda, Cappadocia. His remains

were brought for the first time to Suceava in ca. 1402, in the reign of Alexandru cel Bun [the Kind] and

episcopate of Archbishop Ioseph. In 1686, because of the war, Metropolitan Dosoftei (a very erudite

Romanian monk-priest) took the holy relics with him in Poland to protect them. He died there, but on

the 18th of July 1783 the relics were brought back to Suceava from Jolcova (Poland) on the orders of

another Dosoftei, the Bishop of Radauti at that time; Al. Lascarov-Moldoveanu, Viaţa Sfântului Ioan

cel Nou de la Suceava, Bucharest, Anastasia Publishing House, 2002. Every year, on the 2nd of June,

people come on pilgrimage to Suceava to venerate St John the New’s relics.

446


Fig. 13. Exterior frescoes, Voroneţ Monastery’s

Church, details: a) The Last Judgement

[Înfricoşătoarea Judecată] (detail: The Heaven), and

b) Scara Dreptăţii [The Ladder of Justice]; ca. 1547,

Baron, Mărculescu-Popescu, Andreescu et. al.,

România. Schituri, Mânăstiri, Biserici, illustration

and caption p. 33.

The influence of Byzantine models in the iconographic domain is noticeable

also in regard to the themes of the frescoes. Obolensky considers that in the votive

fresco from Voroneţ (1488) in which “the monastery’s founder, Stephen the Great of

Moldavia, followed by his family, offers a model of his church to Christ”, the

“vigourous and realistically portrayed faces contrast with the more abstract features

of St George. The princely clothes, and the treatment of the subject, are purely

Byzantine” (Obolensky 1971)13

. The same is the case with the votive painting

representing Mircea cel Bătrân [the Old] and his family in the chapel of the

Infirmary (Bolniţa), Cozia Monastery.

Fig. 14. a, b: The votive painting representing Mircea cel Bătrân [the Old] and his family

Petru, Marcu, Roxanda, the chapel of the Infirmary (Bolniţa), Cozia Monastery, Argeş

County, 15421543, by David and his son Radoslav; Vaida, Mânăstirea Cozia, p. 16.

Sometimes that was in direct emulation of Byzantine saints wearing that type

of attire:

13 Obolensky, idem, caption of fig. 77.

447


Fig. 15. Sts Constantine and Helena, Hurezu

Monastery, tempera on wood, 112x75 cm, from the first

iconostasis in the church, end of seventeenth century;

Voinescu, “The Post-Byzantine Icons of Wallachia and

Moldavia”, illustration and caption p. 407. Now in the

Museum of Hurezu Monastery.

Awareness of Constantinople art forms came to Romania either through

direct contact, or via the Serbian kingdom, which had adopted the Palaeologan style

as early as 1321 (in Gracaniča Monastery)14

. Both Obolensky and Drăguţ draw

attention to this fact. Drăguţ says that “The [Romanian] iconography recalls several

models coming from the flourishing Serbian kingdom of the time” (Drăguț 1984 vol.

I: 116). Therefore one may say that in the style of Romanian icon painting there is

a twofold orientation: on the one hand, the integration of the artistic forms

common to the Balkan Orthodox countries in the period so very well labeled by the

historian Nicolae Iorga ‘Byzance apres Byzance’, and on the other hand the tendency

to stress, beyond the stylistic diversity with which it came in contact, those elements

original and specific to Rumania15

.

(Voinescu refers to this style as “post-Byzantine,” a term which I shall also

use from time to time).

Summarising the issues discussed so far, Drăguţ comments: “As was to be

expected, Byzantine painting, which had reached the stylistic phase peculiar to the

Paleologus epochs, was adopted especially by the Greek Orthodox Romanian

Church; it is to be found in the numerous foundations of the Transylvanian princes

or of the voivodes in Wallachia”16

. This is also true for Moldova.

Actually, at the beginning of the sixteenth century in both Wallachia and

Moldova, wall and icon painting took an original, more ‘realistic’ turn. A more

‘human’ expression in the holy persons’ face, a modelling of the figures and, in

14 Slobodan Ćurčić, Gračanica: King Milutin’s church and its place in late Byzantine architecture,

Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park (Pennsylvania), 1979; Obolensky, The Byzantine

Commonwealth, pp. 252254. 15 Voinescu, idem, p. 373; I have kept her spelling as ‘Rumania’. Nicolae Iorga, Bizanţul după

Bizanţ [Byzantium after Byzantium], [Institutul de studii bizantine, University of Bucharest],

Bucharest, 1971. 16 Vasile Drăguţ, Romanian Art: Prehistory, Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque,

Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1984, vol. 1, p. 116. The rulers of Wallachia and Moldova

used to call themselves “voievod”, a Slavonic term, which means literally “the military commander”;

they also bore the title “domn”, taken from the Latin imperial formula (dominus, in the sense of Lord or

“master of the country and of her subjects”). K. W. Treptow (ed.), A History of Romania, Columbia

University Press, New York. 1996, p. 83.

448


some cases, a three-dimensional technique began to emerge. The images from the

princely church at Curtea de Argeş dating from the reign of the voivode Neagoe

Basarab (15121521), and those from the Church in the Monastery of Humor,

contemporary with the voivode Petru Rareş (15301538; 15411546)], reveal this

fact17

.

The Moldavian series is from the same period with the other world-famous

exterior murals from Serbia, for example with those from Gracaniča Monastery

which, after the initial painting in 1321 under the King Milutin (12821321), was

painted again in 1570, after the renewal of the Patriarchate of Pec (Ćurčić 1979;

Gavrilovic 2001; Talbot Rice

1963).

In Wallachia, in which the cultural and artistic atmosphere was also

flourishing, masters such as Dobromir and his team of assistants produced

remarkable works – at Dealu, in Târgovişte, at Tismana, in Olt County, at Snagov,

near Bucharest, and at Curtea de Argeş monasteries (see for example, the frescoes of

Archangel Michael and St Demetrius from the latter monastery, both painted in

1526; fig. 1 a, b at the beginning of the chapter [Voinescu 1982: 386387]).

This epoch was dominated by the outstanding personality of Neagoe Basarab,

a man well acquainted with the artistic trends of his time. He was a patron of the arts

and founder of religious establishments. This inspired him to encourage an almost

international diversity of forms, and in as large an artistic area as possible, including

icon painting. Teodora Voinescu mentions Neagoe Basarab’s commissions of

Constantinopolitan frescoes that adorned his newly founded princiary church from

Curtea de Argeş mentioned above, standing beside the icons produced by native

painters from the prince’s own workshop. Voinescu appraises the latter as follows:

The few surviving examples of these local works excel in quality everything

that had been achieved up to that time. Displaying a great thematic diversity, they

feature variety rather than uniformity. Their quality derives from an openness of an

epoch that gave its artists opportunities to treat their subjects distinctively and

originally (Ibidem 375).

In spite of the Byzantine influences, all these accomplishments can be viewed

as signs of Romanians becoming aware of their national identity, with their art

beginning to be distinguished as a specific national art. In icon painting it was

manifested, for example, by incorporating into icons decorations taken from folk art.

Obolensky remarks on this, while at the same time emphasizing the connection with

Byzantium:

Despite their late date, these celebrated paintings are still faithful to the

Byzantine Palaeologan tradition, which is only slightly diluted by the admixture of

realistic and lyrical elements derived from local popular art (Obolensky 1971: 353).

17 The Episcopal Church, or the Monastery of Curtea de Argeş, an impressive monument, was built

by Prince Neagoe Basarab between 15141517, on the site of a metropolitan church which had been

raised in the fourteenth century and acknowledged by the Archbishopric of Constantinople in 1359.

Neagoe Basarab decided that it “to be consecrated as the Assumption of the Virgin […] with great

pomp in the presence of outstanding Orthodox religious personalities, led by the ecumenical Patriarch

Theolipt of Constantinople”, web site: monasteries/romania/ encyclopedia/romania/cities/

ag_curteadearges.html.

449


It was a historical moment in which, as Voinescu puts it:

…native and foreign artists [who worked in Romanian lands at that time], in a

perfect unity of vision, benefitted from propitious conditions to translate the spirit of

the time into Palaeologan nuances that then became their own traditional artistic

language (Voinescu 1982: 374).

The process of awakening the national consciousness came to a political

climax in Mihai Viteazul [Michael the Brave]’s act of uniting the three main

Romanian provinces in 1600 with Transylvania, even though briefly coming

back to Romania. The most frequently represented politic/patriotic motif in icons

and frescoes was the destruction of the country’s invaders Turks and Tartars , as

will become clear in Fig. 16 illustrating the frescoes of Voroneţ:

Fig.16. Judecata de pe urmă [The Last Judgement].

Turks and Tartars going to Hell; fresco in St George

Church, Voroneţ, ca. 1547, attributed to painter Marcu;

Drăguţ, Romanian Art: Prehistory…, vol. 1, illustration

and caption, p. 281.

Attributed to the painter Marcu, the paintings at Voroneţ stand out against an

intensely brilliant blue background, which secures the unity of the composition and

underlines the architectural forms. On the southern façade the usual iconographic

typicon is changed by including an atypical scene: the story of St. John the New

from Suceava. Using as a source the scenes decorating the silver coffin in which the

relics of the saint have been kept, the iconographer handled the colours in such a

way as to make the episode clearly understandable. Drăguţ comments, “Thus the

story of the saint tortured by the Tartars becomes a genuine fight against the

sanguinary predatory hordes which raided Moldavia” (Drăguț 1984 vol. I: 282). In

general the realities and ideology of feudal society are present in icons and frescoes,

since the founders of the churches were usually princes or high local nobility, and

they suggested themes to the painters. This is one of the ways in which later Western

influences came to Romanian icon painting, since the princes and nobility were the

ones who travelled outside the country and also, in the spirit of that time, received a

broad European education.

In Transylvania, just a few murals dating from the sixteenth century have been

preserved (for example, at Cetatea de Baltă). Probably the church of Prislop

Monastery was also painted, and there are a few icons of that time kept in some

churches. From the seventeenth century there are very few works from

Transyilvania, which is not surprising since the Romanians under Austro-Hungarian

occupation did not have full political, socio-economic, and religious rights. In

addition, the new Calvinistic religion of the Empire did not recognise the cult of

icons. Nevertheless, the mural ensemble from the church Sf. Nicolae [St Nicholas] in

Hunedoara, executed by the iconographers Constantin and Stan from that period has

450


been preserved. The author of the Biserica Ortodoxă Română. Monografie-Album

considers that it is likely that the church from Turnu Roşu was painted by

iconographers sent by Matei Basarab of Wallachia (16321654). It is also the case

that the church of the Monastery Sâmbata de Sus, and the church of Ocna Sibiului

were painted at about the same time by iconographers sent by Prince Constantin

Brâncoveanu (1654–1714) from Wallachia; they are his Transylvanian

foundations18

.

The most famous school of iconographers in the seventeenth century was

around the Monastery of Hurezu or Hurezi, Vâlcea County, Wallachia. It was open

on the initiative of Constantin Brâncoveanu, and led by the Greek Master

Constantinos, as will be detailed below. The frescoes and icons from that monastery

are well preserved (Fig. 17)

Fig. 17. (a) The Church and (b) exterior

fresco The Judgement Day of Hurezu Monastery,

Vâlcea County, built and painted 1690-1694 by

iconographers from the local painting school;

Baron, Mărculescu-Popescu, Andreescu et al,

România. Schituri, Mânăstiri, Biserici;

illustration and caption, p. 51.

In spite of the Byzantine influences, all these accomplishments can be viewed

as signs of Romanians becoming aware of their national identity, with their art

beginning to be distinguished as a specific national art. In icon painting it was

manifested, for example, by incorporating into icons decorations taken from folk art.

Obolensky remarks on this, while at the same time emphasizing the connection with

Byzantium:

Despite their late date, these celebrated paintings are still faithful to the

Byzantine Palaeologan tradition, which is only slightly diluted by the admixture of

realistic and lyrical elements derived from local popular art (Obolensky 1971: 353).

It was a historical moment in which, as Voinescu puts it:

…native and foreign artists [who worked in Romanian lands at that time], in a

perfect unity of vision, benefitted from propitious conditions to translate the spirit of

the time into Palaeologan nuances that then became their own traditional artistic

language (Voinescu 1982: 374).

The process of awakening the national consciousness came to a political

climax in Mihai Viteazul [Michael the Brave]’s act of uniting the three main

Romanian provinces in 1600 with Transylvania, even though briefly coming

18 Antonie Plămădeală, Biserica Ortodoxă Română. MonografieAlbum [The Romanian Orthodox

Church. Album-Monograph], p. 161208.

451


back to Romania. The most frequently represented politic/patriotic motif in icons

and frescoes was the destruction of the country’s invaders Turks and Tartars , as

will become clear in Fig. 18 illustrating the frescoes of Voroneţ.

Fig. 18. Judecata de pe urmă [The Last Judgement].

Turks and Tartars going to Hell; fresco in St George

Church, Voroneţ, ca. 1547, attributed to painter Marcu;

Drăguţ, Romanian Art: Prehistory…, vol. 1, illustration

and caption, p. 281.

Attributed to the painter Marcu, the paintings at Voroneţ stand out against an

intensely brilliant blue background, which secures the unity of the composition and

underlines the architectural forms.

The most famous school of iconographers in the seventeenth century was

around the Monastery of Hurezu or Hurezi, Vâlcea County, Wallachia. It was open

on the initiative of Constantin Brâncoveanu (1654–1714) and led by the Greek

Master Constantinos, as will be detailed below. The frescoes and icons from that

monastery are well preserved.

Fig. 19. (a) The Church and (b) exterior fresco

The Judgement Day of Hurezu Monastery, Vâlcea

County, built and painted 16901694 by

iconographers from the local painting school;

Baron, Mărculescu-Popescu, Andreescu et al.,

România. Schituri, Mânăstiri, Biserici; illustration

and caption, p. 51.

The artist added to the images elements peculiar to his own training and

vision, trying to adapt them to the demands of a public increasingly attached to this

type of work.

In the second half of the seventeenth century, the reigns of Matei Basarab

(1632–1654) and Constantin Brâncoveanu (1688–1714) in Wallachia stimulated the

development of new values. The icons of this period have a strong autochthonous

character. This indigenous character infused the traditional Byzantine forms with a

new synthesis elaborated under the influence of Mount Athos and the Greek-Cretan

schools, and reinforced by the Greek overtone of the late seventeenth century

Romanian culture.

Two phases can be distinguished in this process of ‘national innovation’ (my

own term): the first comprises the reign of Matei Basarab and his successors; the

452


second lasts between the time of Şerban Cantacuzino (1678–1688), throughout the

whole era of Brâncoveanu painting, up to the early eighteenth century, when

Wallachia enjoyed an epoch of relative historical and cultural calm, with the

Ottoman expansionism concentrated in other areas.

The seventeenth century was a time of prolific church building in Romanian

lands (and also of building other edifices intended as instruments of internal and

external authority in the service of an administration largely connected to the

Orthodox Church). Also the culture of that time was dominated by the voivodes and

boyars (landowners), who thought that they might gain a place in history by proving

their Byzantine descent. They built rich religious establishments to increase the

prestige of their families.

This historical context provided work opportunities for both indigenous and

foreign iconographers (Voinescu 1982: 378); the arrival of foreign painters did not

impinge negatively on the activity of the locals. Working together in groups or

organised teams, in family circles where this occupation passed from father to son,

and painting simultaneously murals and portable icons, these iconographers created

a number of successful works in the style of their time. From among them, there

emerged in the first half of the seventeenth century, masters of mural and icon

painting like Stoica from Brădet, Stroe from Târgovişte, Pârvul Mutu, and a group

from the Monastery of Hurezu: Ion, Andrei, Istratie, Ion Călugărul [the Monk], and

many others.

Wallachia and Moldova found themselves somehow isolated and less subject

to cultural influences from neighbouring lands, which, in that moment, were not in a

position to develop and enrich their artistic patrimony. The attempt to return to

tradition from the Western influence, which Voinescu talks about, lasted here from

the latter half of the seventeenth century until the mid- nineteenth century, when the

Western style became very fashionable. In the seventeenth century painters

borrowed the typology of famous works of the past (for example, the Virgin

Hodegetria and the Virgin Eleousa from Valea and Boda) or copied subjects and

figures from murals, as was the case with the icon of St. Michael from Topolniţa, or

the Deesis from Văleni, Prahova County.

III. The third phase of Romanian iconography (second half of the

nineteenth century – today)

The nineteenth century constitutes, in the political and cultural evolution of

the Romanian people, an epoch of challenges and uncertainties specific to a new

beginning. Until after the middle of the century these principalities did not know

what political fate they would have. (Wallachia and Moldova were united in 1859;

Transylvania joined only in 1918). This period of time constitutes the end of the

Phanariot regime in the Romanian principalities. Independence from the Turks

increased gradually until 1878, when their official control totally ceased as a

consequence of what Romanians call ‘the Independence war’ (the Balkanic war of

1877–1878). The echo of the French Revolution had reached the country. Under the

strong influence of Western ideas, people sought for national principles of

government, and also for new forms of expressing themselves in culture, especially

in art.

453


The figure who best illustrates this confusion in the domain of icon painting

during the second half of the nineteenth century is the icon and Church painter

Gheorghe Tăttărescu (1818 or 1820–1894). The art historians who have written

about Gheorghe Tăttărescu speak usually about his secular art, especially about his

historical works and his portraits, mentioning just en passant his work in the Church.

This is the case with Adina Nanu (1955), Jacques Wertheimer-Ghika19

, Teodora

Voinescu (Voinescu 1940). However Voinescu pays more attention to this aspect

which actually was the most important in Tăttărescu’s career.

Gheorghe Tăttărescu moment in Romanian iconography (c. 1818–1894)

Tăttărescu began his work as an icon painter, but renounced the Byzantine

style working mostly in a manner reflected in the painting below, Fig. 20 (Among

the factors instrumental in his decision were: the artistic taste of the moment created

by the historico-social conditions mentioned above; his secular artistic education (in

Italy), and the painter’s personal circumstances (because his style became popular,

towards the end of his life he was required to paint more and more. When he could

not do so, Tăttărescu bent the rules and rendered fewer scenes than the hermeneias

recommend on the walls of churches).

Fig. 20. Sfânta Fecioară cu Pruncul [The

Holy Virgin and the Child]; Biserica Sfântul

Spiridon cel Nou [St. Spiridon the New Church],

Bucharest, 1858, by Gheroghe Tăttărescu;

Tănăsescu, Popescu, Panaite, Gheorghe M.

Tăttărescu 18181894, Bucharest, Alcor, 1994,

illustration and caption p. 43.

Partially as a reaction to the type of painting Tăttărescu practiced, The Synod

of the Romanian Orthodox Church held a Council in 1889. Among other

recommendations, this official body decided:

1. Their Graces the Eparchial Bishops ought to supervise thoroughly that the

painting and decoration to be carried out under their jurisdiction from now on, either

in old, or in new, or renewed churches, is to follow the Byzantine style already in

use in our Holy Autocephalous Orthodox Eastern Church

2. They [ought] to ask the priests and the officers [epitropii] of all churches,

before agreeing on a Church painting contract, to submit for approval to the Diocese

the [list of] paintings which are proposed to be made, as well as their models

3. They [ought] to compel the priests to accept for blessing in the church only

those icons which have been approved and recommended by the Diocese, or made in

19 In addition to Jacques Wertheimer-Ghika, Gheorghe Tăttărescu şi revoluţia, see also Jacques

Wertheimer-Ghika, Gheorghe M. Tăttărescu. Un pictor român şi veacul său [Gheorghe M. Tăttărescu.

A Romanian Painter and His Epoch], Bucharest, Editura de Stat pentru Literatură şi Artă [State

Publishing House for Literature and Art], 1958.

454


the workshops of our Romanian renowned painters for whom at least two or three

Bishops of the country can provide a guarantee. The icons which have not been

blessed according to the ritual of our Holy Church will be gradually removed from

Christian homes through the moral influence of the priests and, instead, those which

have been approved by the Diocese will be recommended… (Ene D-Vasilescu 2009:

127) .

My view is that the cultural confusion manifested in Romanian secular visual

arts in the nineteenth century, which at that time were seeking to establish a

‘territory’ for themselves, encroached also into the domain of religious art; in some

cases beautiful works were produced and these have remained, as is the case of some

of Tăttărescu’s works (in Biserica Albă, Bucharest; Zamfira, Valea Prahovei, etc.).

At the moment the church decoration displays a variety of style of painting –

overall today churches still send our mind to Byzantium, but the local element is still

very visible.

‘Devout imagination’ manifested in the canonization of saints in Romania

Romanians have, in addition to the ‘ecumenical. Saints as St. George,

Nicholas, Joachim and Anna some holy figures celebrated ‘nationally’: as St John

the New from Suceava (fourteenth century)20

, St. Paraskevy of Iaşi, etc. The local

iconography narrates through images the vitae of both‚ ‘universal’ and local saints.

That of St. John of Suceava is related in details on the southern façade of St. Geoge

Church in Voroneţ Monastery.

Fig. 21 a, b Fresco from Voroneţ

Monastery depicting scenes from the

life of St John the New from Suceava

(southeren façade, by Marcus, ca.

1547)

Fig. 21 c Alexandru cel Bun [the

Kind] and his court welcoming the

relics of St John the New of Suceava.

20 Sfantul Ioan/ St. John the New from Suceava, was born around 1300 in Trapezunt where he was

a merchant. He was martyred in Cetatea Albă (the White Fortress) as a consequence of the intrigues of

the Viennese merchant Reitz on the orders of the ruler [eparh] of this fortress-city.

455

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http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fi%C8%99ier:AlCelBun-SfIoanSv.JPG


Among other local saints, St. Nicodim of Tismana (d. 1406) can be mentioned

as he brought in Romania lands the Athonite monastic organization21

. Among the

saints born in the country, in addition to those already mentioned from the

Brâncoveanu family (Constantine, his sons, and a son- in-law, Ianache Calinic from

Cernica [17871955]) can be considered in more detail. He was born (as

Constantine) on the 7th of Octombrie 1787 in Bucharest. In 1807 he entered Cernica

Monastery where Abbot/starets was Timothy. After one year as a disciple of the

renowned spiritual father Pimen he became a monk and on the 3rd of December

1808 was elevated to hyeromonk. On the 13th of December 1813 he was ordained a

priest. After two years, on the 20th of September 1815, Fr. Calinic was made a

spiritual director by the Metropolitan Nectarie of Ungro-Wallachia. No long after

starets Timothy died (1816), on the 13th of December 1818 Calinic was elected the

leader of the community by the monks in Cernica Monastery and he remained in this

office for thirty three years. On the 14th of September 1851 he was appointed a

bishop in Râmnicu Vâlcea and for the next seventeen years he led his flock with

much dedication. He was a very good organiser of monastic life in Romania

because, while being an Abbot, he was not only taking care of Cernica, but also of

the monasteries around it: Pasărea, Căldăruşani, Ghighiu, Poiana Mărului, Răteşti,

Ţigăneşti, Ciorogârla, and the skete Icoana. As a bishop, he continued the same

activity. In 1863 he founded Frăsinei Monastery with an Athonite typikon which is

still adhered to until the present day. On 24 May 1867 he withdrew from the

episcopal seat and died on the 11th April 1868; he was interred in St. George’s

Church within the precinct of Cernica Monastery. After 87 years, in 1955, The

Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church decided to canonize Calinic and on the

23rd of October 1955 that happened (Mironescu 1930; Diaconescu 1998).

Also the popularity of some contemporary hermits might lead to their

canonization. This is the case of the elderly Cleopa (Ilie) from Sihăstria Monastery,

of his spiritual father, Paisie (Olaru), etc.

Conclusion

In the light of what we have discussed here, the answer to our question –

whether our ‘devout imagination’ is geographically and nationally determined,

would be that it is – or rather it can be to a certain extent – but not to a degree to

make its object unrecognizable in an artistic family or a particular culture.

In the case of Romania, at least with regard to religious art, its filiation with

the Byzantine church decoration is obvious. At the same time, if we look at the icons

reproduced here (especially in figs. 22, 23a, b), we can detect a local touch apparent

in the fact that the artists attributed to the faces of the holy person depicted features

from those in the faces of people around them. Sometimes they have even dressed

the saints on the church walls in the national costume, e.g. the church Sts. Peter and

Paul in Timişoara.

21 St. Nicodim (us) of Tismana (d. 1406), lived for a while on the Mount where he was the Abbot of

Hilandar Monastery, and after arriving in Romanian lands he propagated the Athonite principles. He

spent most of his life in the monastery of Tismana, in the south of Wallachia, and was later canonized;

Păcurariu, Istoria, 2000, p. 90.

456


Fig. 22. Icon of the Mother of

God, 2002.

Fig. 23a. Icons of Saint Paraskevia of Iaşi;

twentieth century22

.

22 Saint Parascheva of the Balkans (also known as Petka, Petka of Bulgaria, Petca Parasceva,

Paraskevi of Serbia, Paraskeva Pyatnitsa, Parascheva of Tirnovo, Parascheva the Serbian, Parascheva

of Belgrade, Parascheva the New, Parascheva the Young) was an ascetic female saint of the eleventh

century. She was born in the town of Epivates (close to today’s Istanbul) on the shore of the Sea of

Marmara; her parents were wealthy landowners. The legend says that when she was 10 years old,

Parascheva heard in a church the Lord’s words: “Whoever wants to come after Me, let him deny

himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mark 8, 34). These words would determine her to give

her rich clothes away to the poor and flee to Constantinople. Her parents, who did not support her

decision to follow an ascetic, religious life, looked for her in various cities. Parascheva fled to

Chalcedon, and afterwards lived at the church of the Most Holy Theotokos in Heraclea Pontica. She

lived an austere life, experiencing visions of the Virgin Mary. Her voyages took her to Jerusalem,

wishing to spend the rest of her life there. After seeing Jerusalem, she settled in a convent in the

Jordanian desert.When she was 25, an angel appeared in her dreams, telling her to return to her

homeland. She did so and lived in the village of Katikratia, in the church of the Holy Apostles where

she died at the age of 27.

Regarding St. Pareskevy’s veneration, Christian tradition states that after an old sinner was buried

near Parascheva’s grave, the saint protested by appearing in a dream to a local monk. The vision

informed the monk where the saint had been buried; when the body was unearthed, it was found to be

incorruptible. The relics were translated to the church of the Holy Apostles in Katikratia. Parascheva’s

cult and attributes became confused with that of other saints with the same name as well as pre-

Christian deities of the Slavs. As one scholar asks: “Was Parasceve, or Paraskeva, an early Christian

maiden named in honor of the day of the Crucifixion? Or was she a personification of that day, pictured

cross in hand to assist the fervor of the faithful? And was the Paraskeva of the South Slavs the same

who made her appearance in northern Russia? The cults of Paraskevi of Iconium (Parascheva-

Pyatnitsa) and Parascheva of the Balkans were conflated with that of a Slavic deity associated with

Friday, alternatively known as Petka, Pyatnitsa, or Zhiva. Attributes, such as the association with

spinning, were also merged into the cult of these saints. In subsequent years, Paraskevi’s relics were

translated to various churches in the region. In 1238, the relics were translated from Katikratia to

Veliko Tarnovo, capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire. In 1393, they were translated to Belgrade,

specifically the Ružica Church. When Belgrade fell to Ottoman forces in 1521, the relics were

translated to Constantinople. In 1641, the relics were translated to Trei Ierarhi Monastery, in Iaşi,

Romania. In 1888, they were translated to the Metropolitan Cathedral of Iaşi. A severe drought in

194647 affected Moldavia, adding to the misery left by the war. Metropolitan Justinian Marina

permitted the first procession featuring the coffin containing the relics of Saint Paraskevi. The relics

wended their way through the drought-deserted villages of Iaşi, Vaslui, Roman, Bacău, Putna, Neamţ,

Baia and Botoşani Counties. The offerings collected on this occasion were distributed, based on

Metropolitan Justinian’s decisions, to orphans, widows, invalids, school cafeterias, churches under

construction, and to monasteries in order to feed the sick, and old or feeble monks (Joan Delaney

Grossman, Feminine Images in Old Russian Literature and Art, in Nicholas Valentine Riasanovsky,

Gleb Struve, and Thomas Eekman, California Slavic Studies, vol. 11, University of California Press,

1980, p. 39 [pp. 33-71], and Joanna Hubbs, Mother Russia: the feminine myth in Russian culture, vol.

842 of Midland Book, Indiana University Press, 1993, p . 117).

457

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Fig. 23b. Icons of Saint Paraskevia of Iaşi; twentieth century.

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Abstract

People have multiple identities: national, social, and religious, among others. Some

still believe today that having a certain ethnicity automatically entitles individuals to consider

themselves as belonging to a religious denomination – this is especially so in countries where

the majority of the population is Orthodox Christian (i.e. for them, obviously mistakenly, one

who is a Greek, Russian, or Romanian would be a Christian Orthodox and any English

person an Anglican). By extension, they consider the liturgical art in their churches as

expressing specific national characteristics.

At the same time, according to traditional canons, iconographers decorating Orthodox

churches are not supposed to sign their works. Any type of identity is suppressed in their

case because the result of their labour is thought to be divinely inspired.

Given these facts, to what extent can one still speak about the existence of a

connection between the church iconography and the culture of a particular nation? And, if

the assumption of a link proves to be correct, how is the situation to be described in the case

of Romanian ecclesiastical art? We shall discuss whether iconography can mediate, in

addition to identity, knowledge, awareness, and related concepts.

460

are ‘devout imagination’ and ‘seeing through images ... limba si cultura/44_ene vasiles… ·...

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