Elisabeta Negrău

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in analyzing the manufacturing techniques of Byzantine church doors in laboratory settings. However, the connection between the iconography and significance of the décor of church doors and their liturgical performativity, as well as their parallels with iconostases in Byzantium, remained a relatively underexplored area of study. This article seeks to delve deeper into these intersections. By focusing on the relationship between the iconography of church doors in Middle to Late Byzantium and their connection to the sacred space and liturgical practices, I aim to shed light on how these artworks played a crucial role in the sacred experience of the Byzantines. This exploration will not highlight only the aesthetic evolution of church door artwork but also emphasize the communal and embodied nature of the religious experience during the Byzantine era. Their intricate designs were not merely decorative elements but served as portals to the divine, enriching the salvation journey of worshippers as they crossed the threshold into the liturgical spaces. By conducting an examination of the development of door iconography and their symbolism throughout the empire’s history, the transformation of narrative depictions from the Middle Byzantine era to the Palaiologan period, culminating in a convergence of symbolic meanings within the sacred space of the church, is delineated. This transformation is further exemplified by a sculpted church door from the Principality of Wallachia. By bridging the gap between art history and religious studies, this article aims to rekindle interest in the profound symbolism and significance of Byzantine church doors and their relation to sacred liturgical space, offering a broader perspective on an important aspect of Byzantine heritage.

This paper examines post-Byzantine Greek icons that contain topographical representations, cartographic views, and bird’s-eye views of identifiable geographical sites, focusing on Greek icons from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century depicting the patron saints of different islands : Corfu, Zakynthos, Strophades, Hydra, Paros, Cyprus, etc. The subject is approached according to three axes : the visual culture of the time, devotional practices, and territorial identities.

The volume is open source and can be downloaded here: https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:64741/
The book is part of the ERC Consolidator Grant RICONTRANS editorial program (grant agreement no. 818791) and contains 11 studies on cultural and artistic transfers between the former Polish-Lithuanian Community and the Romanian territories (Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania).

All the sanctuaries of the local martyrs in Dacia and Thrace, without exception, were destroyed and the episcopal sees in the region were lost to the Avar, Slavic, and Bulgar invasions of the Balkans in the 6 th and 7 th centuries. Only those local saints whose relics were taken to Constantinople, had an active cult in the Byzantine capital or were included in the Constantinopolitan Typicon and the Byzantine menologia had their memory still conserving in the Middle Byzantine period. Along with the Christianization of the Bulgars and the establishment of their local ecclesiastical structures in ca. 870 AD, Bulgarian Church adopted the calendar of the Typicon of Constantinople. With the conquest of Bulgaria started under John Tzimiskes and completed by Basil II, the presence of the Dacian and Thracian saints in the Byzantine calendars increased. However, the Byzantine attempts to re-transplant these cults in Bulgaria remained unsuccessful. There was apparently a fear that these cults would justify the claim of the Byzantine rule over these territories, which led to the deletion of the mentions of Durostorum/Drastar, Moesia, or Danube from the Bulgarian menologia, or to their reduction to a minimum. Instead, the Balkan Churches, especially from the late 12 th to the 14 th centuries, focused on the canonization of their local Slavic saints as a mark of their own identity. The emphasis put on the local Slavic saints suggests a desire to build their own identity that would reflect the ecclesiastical and political history of these states, other than the Byzantine one. This identity construction was reflected in the panegyrics of the local South Slavic saints and was then transferred through the circulation of manuscripts and iconography to the Romanian Principalities in the 15 th century, where it was perpetuated after the fall of the Balkan states.

Partant d’une scène peinte dans le porche de l’église du cimetière monastique de Hurezi (1699), qui représente la Nef de la Chrétienté attaquée par les ennemis de la vraie foi, l’article retrace l’évolution du
motif théologique et iconographique de l’Église-Navire et se propose d’identifier les sources probables de la représentation valaque. Dans les écrits patristiques et dans l’iconographie byzantine et médiévale occidentale, ce motif prend des formes spécifiquement confessionnelles (notamment l’arche de saint Pierre ou le bateau de saint Pierre dans le milieu catholique). Au XVIe siècle, sur le fond polémique confessionnel catholique-protestant, les artistes commencent à réaliser des images satiriques illustrant allégoriquement les affrontements entre les deux églises par des batailles entre deux navires en mer. Plus particulièrement, ces gravures sont une création du milieu protestant allemand. Alors que la Contre-réforme catholique continue d’utiliser le motif allégorique du navire sillonnant la mer comme image de l’Église catholique triomphante ; le milieu protestant, lui, développe une iconographie de l’Église où cette dernière est assimilée à un navire assiégé en mer par différentes catégories  d’ennemis : l’église papale, les hérésiarques, les Juifs, les musulmans, et finalement les personnages infâmes de l’Apocalypse. Imprimées, ces gravures parviennent en Europe de l’Est, dans le grand centre d’impression de la Laure de Petchersk à Kiev, qui se servait de sources visuelles allemandes pour son atelier de lithographie. Les peintres, graveurs et dessinateurs ukrainiens de la seconde moitié du xvii
e siècle reprennent ce motif ; ils l’exploitent comme une allégorie de l’Église orthodoxe assiégée ; et ils l’exportent ensuite dans les régions
voisines, notamment en Valachie et en Russie. Aussi, au milieu du XVIIe siècle, le motif rejoindra-t-il les circuits catholiques du monde grec. Dans le milieu du Mont Athos, il sera notamment utilisé par Nicodème l’Hagiorite, qui inclura une illustration du motif dans un recueil de canons, le Pedalion, à la fin du XVIIIe siècle.

The article presents in the introduction an overview of the development of the templon in Byzantium and the Balkans, focusing afterwards on the evolution of the iconostasis in Wallachia (Romania) in the 16th century. The material vestiges of 16th-century Wallachian templa are scarce in terms of wood or masonry parts preserved, but still existent icons which were originally part of iconostases testify of their iconography and arrangement. The study analyzes the remained components and draws conclusions on the composition of the 16th-century Wallachian iconostases, their decoration, height, iconographic structure, and artistic sources. The decoration type came initially from the Late-Byzantine Balkan environment, especially Serbian, and evolved up to the end of the 16th century to a Renaissance (Veneto-Greek) and Ottoman-inspired repertoire. The iconostases are also analyzed in conjunction with the architectural features of the sanctuary space and with the liturgic and ritual requirements.

The study analyzes a group of lesser-known icons from Wallachia, dating from the 15th century to the mid-17th century. They are Eleousa-Glykophilousa icons, sometimes mixing in a rarer iconographic detail, a phylactery with inscription held by the Infant Jesus. The icons do not descent from a single prototype, but from several related types, of Late Byzantine, Macedonian, and Cretan origins. They seemed to have entered Wallachia in two different phases. The first Eleousa icon known in Wallachia, originating in the former Metropolitan Cathedral at Curtea de Argeş and later moved to the monastery founded by Neagoe Basarab on the same spot, likely was a Late Byzantine icon from the 14th century. The Wallachian icons of the 16th century shared related iconographic characteristics. The epoch of Neagoe Basarab acted as a catalyst for the different iconographic variants of Palaiologan and post-Palaiologan tradition, both through the cult dedicated to the Mother of God that the voivode developed at the Curtea de Argeş Monastery, his emblematic aulic foundation, and through the great development and renewal of the artistic culture that he sustained in Wallachia and which was emulated later on.

Before the mural paintings in the church of St. Nicholas of the former Bucovăț monastery (c. 1574), no traces were found of the existence of a Kastorian artistic influence in Wallachia. Carmen-Laura Dumitrescu was the first to point out the Kastorian iconographic and stylistic influences at Bucovăț. The present study proposes an investigation of the iconography and style of the paintings of Bucovăț, indicating several similarities with the murals in the church of St. Demetrius in Palatitsia (1570), the work of Nicholas of Linotopi and his team, descendants of the painting traditions of the Kastoria and Ohrid workshops. A contemporary influence originating in Serbia can also be seen at Bucovăț, pointing to the area of the newly restored Patriarchate of Peć (1557) as a place where the main painter, a Greek, may have had contacts. Our research extends to the subsequent Wallachian painted churches: the church of the Annunciation in Pitești (1564-1568 or post 1594), the church of the Căluiu monastery (1594), the Princely church in Târgoviște (late 16 th cent.), the church of Sts. Archangels in Ruda-Bârsești (1624). The study concludes that a Kastorian influence coming probably via the revitalized sites of the Archdiocese of Ohrid and the Patriarchate of Peć entered Wallachia after the mid-16 th century and blended into the iconography and the style of the local painters, being in part responsible for the peculiar iconographic and stylistic trends of the late 16 th-century Wallachian painting.

The portraits of Prince Ioannis Giorgios Karatzas
Ioannis Giorgios Karatzas (1754-1844) was a dragoman of the
Ottoman Empire in 1807-1808 and 1812 and ruler of the Principality of
Wallachia between 1812 and 1818. Our communication presents his preserved,
and some of them unpublished, painted portraits. Like other Phanariot rulers
from the turn of the 19th century (Alexandros Mourouzis, Konstantinos
Ypsilantis), Karatzas belonged to the category of Western art appreciators,
ordering, during his Wallachian reign, painted portraits of himself to the
Bohemian artist Michael Töpler, and to an Italian painter  during his exile in Pisa
after 1818. Our study aims to clarify the paternity and execution date of these
portraits, as well as the role played with regards to them by his youngest
daughter, Princess Ralou Argyropoulou. We also clarify on this occasion the
identity of a portrait previously identified with Ioannis Karatzas, painted by the
Serbian artist Pavel Djurković in 1824. According to the costume and the
heraldic elements, the painted personage is not Karatzas, but the ban Barbu Văcărescu.

New Perspectives on the Beginnings of Portraiture in Wallachia (1750–1830)

The introduction of the Phanariot regime by the Ottoman Empire in the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (1711/1716‒1821) brought an acceleration of the political and cultural contacts equally with Istanbul and the West. The Phanariot rulers, many of them intellectual and cosmopolitan figures, manifested a special interest in developing the art of portrait. In 1742, the Swiss pastel drawer and painter Jean-Étienne Liotard was invited by the Moldavian Prince Constantine Mavrocordat to come from Constantinople to Moldavia to draw portraits of the
princely couple. The first painter being in Walachia was founded in 1787 by the Phanariot Prince
Nikolaos Mavroyeni, in Bucharest, and led by a Venetian painter, Giorgio Venier. A monastery
school of painting was founded in 1780s near the capital of Bucharest, at the Cernica Monastery,
and put under the guidance of a Russian church painter, Ivan, strongly influenced by the Western
Classicism. In 1800, the Phanariot rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia began to commission portraits
to a Bohemian painter, Michael Töpler, educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, whose
elegant portraits were influenced by the English Romantic style of the Georgian Era, that the profes‑
sors of the Vienna Academy of Arts experimented with at the time. By 1800, the Wallachian ladies
of the high society began to turn from the Constantinopolitan fashion of clothing to the French
Empire style. These major fashion transformations were mirrored in by the portraits painted by
Töpler. The votive portrait took a turn also, changing its appearance under the strong influence of
the Western fashion and the Western‑style portraits. Nicholas the Polkovnik (Nicolae Polcovnicul),
an icon painter from Bucharest, began to work votive portraits in oil, in an autodidact manner,
after canvas portraits made by foreign artists such as Michael Töpler, Pavel Djurković and others, fact which generated major influences on the art of portrait in terms of style, manner, and iconog‑
raphy. Nicholas the Polkovnik experimented also with canvas portraits in landscape, popularized in
Wallachia by the Bohemian Michael Töpler and Henri de Mondonville, a French drawer established
in Bucharest. This first self‑taught stage of assimilation of European art by the Wallachian painters
took place between 1800 and 1830 and managed by its own means to completely change the local
portrait painting, making an organic transition from the post‑Byzantine tradition to the Western
European style of the Empire and Biedermeier periods.

The study analyses the works of two virtually unknown Greek painters from the mid-seventeenth century. The names of the two painters, the brothers Ioannis and Georgios, are known from a letter addressed
to Patriarch Nikon of Moscow, dated July 25 1655, in which they enumerate several churches they painted in Kiev and Wallachia:
Berestovo, Căldărușani, Brebu, Strehaia, Cornățel, Plumbuita, Plătărești,
Soveja. The study concludes that the two painters were trained in (nowadays) Western Macedonia. It also discusses the connections between the two painters, their patrons and the theologian Meletios Syrigos.

The article presents newly discovered Brancovan inscriptions from the churches in Râmnicu Sărat, Gura Motrului and Băbeni-Buzău, mainly consisting of signatures of painters, but also of dedicatory inscriptions reread after recent restorations. The new data complement and correct the known information about the above-mentioned churches.

The study accompanying the corpus of inscriptions of the Cozia painted menology (c. 1391) analyses the possible sources of the selection of its saints. We suggest that the synaxarial source for the paintings at Cozia was not Bulgarian or Serbian, but Constantinopolitan. The manuscript Paris. Coislin gr. 223, a menology of Constantinopolitan tradition composed in 1301 for the use of Mount Athos' protos, seems to be the closest to the selection of the saints at Cozia. However, the inscriptions of Cozia contain some Bulgarian particularities, which could be due to a Bulgarian origin of the painters. The study also refutes a previous attempt to date the Cozia narthex paintings on the basis of the presence in its menology of the feast of the Forefathers of Christ, the mobile celebration of the Sunday before Nativity. Since the feast is illustrated at Cozia on the same date, December 16, as in the Synaxary of Constantinople, and not on 17, the date the Sunday fell on in the year 1391, we conclude that its presence at Cozia is probably the result of an influence of the Constantinopolitan rite.

The cult of saints is an important element of reference in studying medieval culture, Church life and iconography of religious art. Like all medieval states, the Principality of Wallachia through its rulers, main founders of the Church, developed in the middle Ages a preference for certain patron saints. Our study discusses the most important manifestations of their cult, revealing their possible motivations, influences and iconographic peculiarities.

The influence of Byzantium was decisive in the political and cultural orientation of the newly constituted state of Wallachia in the 1330s, after breaking from the Hungarian suzerainty. As the Wallachian population was mainly Orthodox, its Church culture and political institutions were Byzantine creations mediated by Balkan formulae. The Wallachian rulers marked the creation of the new institutions through monuments of high quality, erected and decorated by artists from regions throughout the Balkans who had worked on imperial sites. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, a local culture developed that was characterized by a high-quality artistic production of post-Palaiologan tradition and local and sometimes unique formulae in architecture, painting, and decorative arts. The mature artistic taste of the sixteenth century is the result of a careful and successive filtering of Byzantine, Balkan, East-Central European, and later Ottoman models through the layers of local taste and visual traditions.