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Ukrainian Influences in the Evolution of the Iconostasis in the Romanian Churches of Transylvania (17th–19th Century)

Influences ukrainiennes dans l’évolution de l’iconostase des églises roumaines de Transylvanie (xviiexixe siècle)
Ana Dumitran, Roksolana Kosiv, Bogdan Ilieș et Andrei Buda

Résumés

La Transylvanie a été à la confluence de diverses formes d’expression artistique de la confession orthodoxe. Au xviiie siècle, ces tendances culturelles sont arrivées à la fois par les anciennes routes (la Pologne-Lituanie et la Galicie des Habsbourg, parfois avec un détour moldave) et du milieu serbe, qui avait adopté le baroque de Kyiv en tant que forme nationale d’expression artistique. Parmi les différentes tendances, la ruthène-ukrainienne était la plus constante. Les apprentis roumains apprenaient leur métier d’artistes itinérants ukrainiens et russes. L’ancienne iconostase emmurée et ses deux ouvertures symétriques ont ainsi été remplacées par de nouvelles variantes, telles une troisième ouverture, des portes royales, un templon ajouté et une structure tridimensionnelle. Dans certains cas, le mur de l’iconostase a été entièrement remplacé. Les commanditaires étaient plutôt pauvres. Ainsi, les éléments baroques sont visibles surtout dans les peintures, pleinement modifiées par les influences ukrainiennes, tant au niveau de la composition ou de l’iconographie qu’au niveau technique et stylistique.

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Purpose

1In the Eastern Christian tradition of the Byzantine Rite, the iconostasis concentrates the piety both of the celebrating priest (through veneration and incensation as prescribed by the diataxis) and of the believers (through kissing and lighting of candles as forms of personal devotion). In its role of a separation between the sanctuary and the nave of the church, the iconostasis is the focus of the gaze of the faithful taking part in the liturgy. Significantly, its visual aspect and form have varied greatly in time and space as a result of evolving local conditions and appropriation of external knowledge and styles.

  • 1  Cojocaru Cristina, Negrău Elisabeta, Polizu Sultana-Ruxandra, Văetiși Atanasia, Iconostase din Buc (...)
  • 2  Popa Corina, Iancovescu Ioana, Bedros Vlad, Negrău Elisabeta, Repertoriul picturilor murale brânco (...)

2In Romania, research has focused in particular on the iconostases commissioned by Prince Constantine Brankovan (Rom. Constantin Brâncoveanu) (1688-1714),1 whose name is linked to the most important development of Romanian art. Originating in Wallachia in the southern Carpathian Mountains, the “Brankovan style”2 resulted from the combination of late Byzantine forms developed by Italo-Cretan artists and the decorative exuberance of the Baroque, echoed in Moldavia. It was particularly marked by the spirit in which the religious art of the Romanians in the southern half of Transylvania evolved throughout the eighteenth century. Romanian historians have emphasized that the Brankovan style was largely received as the national style. Yet, in multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Transylvania, other artistic influences played a great role.

3We ask whether Transylvania can be included in the flow of artistic influences and models that spread from Kyiv and Moscow to Sremski Karlovci (Germ. Karlowitz) and further on to Mount Athos. We establish whether Transylvania was a transit territory for these influences and models or only a space where they arrived conjuncturally, coming even from the opposite direction, from south of the Danube, following the placing of Serbian hierarchs at the head of the Transylvanian Orthodox Episcopate. The ways and means of transfer, as well as the intensity of the impact that the Ukrainian Baroque had on the art of Romanians in Transylvania are systematically analysed for the first time, as manifestations of a cultural-artistic phenomenon that decisively marked the evolution towards modernity of this part of Europe.

Conditions for the Development of Ukrainian Church Art in the Seventeenth Century and the Reasons for Its Popularity

  • 3  In this article, we use both the ethnonyms “Ruthenian” and “Ukrainian” to reflect historical and r (...)
  • 4  The significance of Peter Mohyla’s activities for the development of Ukrainian culture and the amb (...)

4In the seventeenth century, there was a significant development of theological thought and church art in the Ruthenian-Ukrainian milieu.3 This was due to the activities of church brotherhoods, the establishment of a printing house at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra at the beginning of the seventeenth century (thanks to the efforts of its archimandrite Elisha Pletenytsky), and the general activity of church hierarchs who were oriented towards Western European education and culture. The recognition and focus on the achievements of Western European educational institutions and their teaching systems, primarily Jesuit colleges, did not diminish the importance of supporting and developing the Eastern Rite Church, to which Ukrainian believers traditionally belonged. Thanks to the efforts of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, church brotherhoods, and the Metropolitan of Kyiv, Galicia, and All Rus’ at that time, Iov Boretsky, the Orthodox Kyiv Metropolitanate was restored in 1620 by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophanes. Metropolitan Peter Mohyla (Rom. Petru Movilă) (1633–1646) began active work in the development of culture and education, and he is associated with the founding of a college in Kyiv, which, in the second half of the seventeenth century, became an academy (Kyiv-Mohyla Academy).4

  • 5  Paul of Aleppo’s Journal. Vol. 1. Syria, Constantinople, Moldavia, Wallachia and the Cossaks’ Land (...)

5In the seventeenth century, Ukrainian icon painting and church art, in general, experienced a flourishing. The Kyiv Collegium, later the Academy, had drawing classes. At the end of the seventeenth century, an icon-painting school became active at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, where the teaching system was equivalent to that of an academy of arts. This led to the fact that “Cossack icon painters” and engravers were famous not only within their homeland. The descriptions of the Antiochian traveller, Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo, recorded in his diary from 1654–1656,5 along with the preserved works, testify that in the mid-seventeenth century, the Baroque style began to develop in Central Ukrainian icon painting, which then gained great popularity. At this time, under the influence of Western European engravings and the treatises of Ukrainian theologians, new allegorical scenes and images appeared in church art. Significant attention was given to Passion narratives and scenes with Eucharistic content; new interpretations of the iconography of the Akathist to the Mother of God emerged, and illustrated Akathists to Christ, St. Nicholas, the Dormition of the Theotokos, and St. John the Baptist appeared. Central Ukrainian icon painters were renowned for their intricate decoration of works using various gilding techniques and skilful decorative filigree carving. Their works attracted attention for their particular opulence and richness, which led to the spread of this style to the art of neighbouring regions, with new iconography, methods of execution, and the structure and decoration of iconostases.

Transylvania: Some Historical Considerations

  • 6  For an overview of confessional developments in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, the Principality (...)
  • 7  For two excellent case studies, see Cojocaru Cristina, “The Painter Grigorie Popovici and His Mast (...)

6Part of Romania since 1918, Transylvania is the territory bordered by the Carpathian Mountains to the east and south and by Ukraine, Hungary, and Serbia to the north, west, and south-west. Its historical evolution was different from that of the other provinces of the Romanian state (Moldavia, Wallachia, and Dobrudja), mainly due to its membership in Western political structures: the Roman Empire (from the second century to the fourth century), the Kingdom of Hungary (from the eleventh century to the sixteenth century), the autonomous Principality (1570–1690), the Habsburg Monarchy (1691–1867), and Austro-Hungary (1867–1918). Its long incorporation into Western civilization was due to the coexistence of Romanians with conquering Hungarians and German settlers. This multi-ethnic aspect was coupled with a complicated and ever-splintering confessional spectrum. Thus, at the beginning, Romanians were spiritually affiliated to the Eastern Church, and then, depending on the confessional orientation of the political regime, some adopted Catholicism, others Calvinism, and others Greek Catholicism. The Catholic Hungarians also split into Calvinist, Lutheran, and Unitarian communities, while the Catholic Germans adopted Lutheranism en masse.6 The presence of the Western denominations made possible the profound and direct action of cultural factors whose influence to the east and south of the Carpathians, in Moldavia and Wallachia, was either much less pronounced or manifested itself late, only after they had been assimilated by the neighbouring Orthodox communities, in particular the Ukrainian, Russian, and Serbian.7

7Another important aspect is the modest economic situation of most Transylvanian Romanian communities. If we consider the biographical information about the painters, who either came from the elite or from communities closely linked to the urban life of the province, we easily understand why Romanians were unable to develop a particular appetite for artistic crafts, which required long periods of apprenticeship and expenses beyond the means of a peasant household. In the absence of large-scale financial support, architectural monuments of impressive proportions could not be built, equipped, and maintained, nor could a monasticism comparable to that housed in the monasteries of Moldavia or Wallachia develop. That is why the arts and cultural activities in general were practiced occasionally, by means of copyists and itinerant painters, and the contracted works, housed in tiny wooden churches, were modest in size and had a provincial, often mediocre, appearance.

8The origin of these cultural colporteurs was diverse and largely dependent on geographical proximity and the evolution of the arts and culture in general in the surrounding territories, as well as on military events and hierarchical relations that functioned in certain periods, regardless of political boundaries. Thus, in the southern half of Transylvania, it was artists from Wallachia and from south of the Danube who predominantly came, as a result of the direct relations of the bishopric – with its mobile seat in Geoagiu de Sus (Hung. Felgyógy), Lancrăm (Hung. Lámkerék, Germ. Langendorf), and Alba Iulia (Hung. Gyulafehérvár, Germ. Karlsburg) – with the Metropolitanate of Wallachia and the Patriarchate of Peć. The permanence of some settlements as a place of refuge for Wallachian boyars in conflict with their voivodes and the practice of transhumance across the Carpathians by the Romanian communities around Sibiu (Hung. Szeben, Germ. Hermannstadt) and Brașov (Hung. Brassó, Germ. Kronstadt), who were owners of large flocks of sheep, also facilitated cultural and artistic exchanges. The Macedo-Vlach merchants, who began to appear in Transylvania in the first half of the seventeenth century, were also among those who mediated the bringing of painters from the southern Carpathians.

9In the northern half of Transylvania, Moldavian painters arrived more frequently as a result of the founding of the Bishopric of Vad (Hung. Révkolostor), an extension of the Moldavian Metropolitanate, at the turn from the fifteenth century to the sixteenth century, as well as Ruthenian painters, particularly as a result of the surplus of craftsmen in the Ruthenian society of the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom during the seventeenth century.

10An important role in these painters’ orientation towards Transylvania must have been played by the numerous communities of Ruthenians scattered throughout Transylvania. The trajectory of some painters’ activities closely follows the positioning of Ruthenian villages on the Transylvanian map, and their involvement may well have been related to the arrival – throughout the period under consideration – of new groups of Ruthenians, who delayed for a while the melting of the communities established in the previous centuries into the Romanian Orthodox majority.

11The very small number of preserved works datable before the middle of the eighteenth century prevents us from making more than mere assumptions about their authors and how they came to the attention of Transylvanian patrons, who are also known to us only from inscriptions mentioning them as donors. In addition, in the seventeenth century there was real pressure from the princes and superintendents of the Hungarian Reformed Church to convert the Romanians to Calvinism. The proselytism of the political and religious authorities, which took the form of an obligation to support the effort to translate liturgical books into Romanian and have them printed, reduced the capacity of the Romanian priests and their parishioners to invest in art objects. As for those who led the Orthodox dioceses and, from the last years of the seventeenth century onwards, the Greek-Catholic one, we know so little about their biographies that we cannot even guess whether they had a preference for one stylistic orientation or another. The churches they consecrated were painted by painters trained both in the spirit of post-Byzantine art of Balkan origin and in that specific to the Ruthenian environment, with its much wider openness to realism and three-dimensionality, as well as to the iconographic and decorative repertoire of Western art. It is, therefore, highly unlikely that they were consulted on the choice of painters, and an initiative on their part to introduce regulations in this area only manifested itself in the first decades of the nineteenth century, when they advocated the total Westernization of the appearance of churches.

  • 8  Forgó András, Kulcsár Krisztina (eds), “Die habsburgische Variante des aufgeklärten Absolutismus.” (...)
  • 9  The complexity of the personal and political relationships behind these donations has been explore (...)
  • 10  The analysis of mass-produced Russian icons sold to Romanians in Transylvania by Russian itinerant (...)
  • 11  In the whole of Transylvania, only three Russian icons of high artistic quality have been identifi (...)

12Throughout the previous century, however, real dynasties of local painters had been established. They were added to those specially brought in from outside Transylvania or who came on their own initiative and, thanks to an intense circulation of goods and ideas, accelerated by the Aufklärung policy of the Viennese Court,8 they too familiarized themselves as much as they could with the Baroque spirit. The means by which this entered into their art included their direct contact with masters trained in the Kyivan or Russian environment, whom they met on their study wanderings through Moldavia, Wallachia, Banat, and even south of the Danube; the icons brought mainly from Russia and given to important monasteries and churches by princes and great boyars from the south and east of the Carpathians;9 and, most frequently, the rich production of engravings, distributed either in worship books or in the form of icons printed on paper. Since the art of Transylvanian painters remained essentially a provincial creation, without great artistic pretensions, it is impossible to determine whether certain forms or scenes were taken clumsily but directly from the repertoire of Russian art, which surpasses Ukrainian art especially in its opulence and decorative meticulousness, or whether they represent only pale echoes of representative works, already filtered several times before reaching the hands of Transylvanian apprentices. What is certain is that – in the period that interests us – Transylvania was not visited by any Russian painter skilled in creating monumental works, such as icons or murals,10 and Russian icons, other than mass-produced ones, did not reach Transylvanian churches until the last years of the eighteenth century, and even then, only in a very exceptional manner.11

Forms of Sanctuary Enclosure in Orthodox Churches in Transylvania Before the Seventeenth Century

  • 12  Marcu Istrate Daniela, “From the Greek Bishop Hierotheos to the Latin Bishop Simon: The Churches i (...)
  • 13  Timbuș Sergiu Petru, Iconostasul în Transilvania. Istorie, artă și teologie (cca 1400–1650) [The I (...)

13Although the presence of Christians in Transylvania during Roman rule (from the second century to the fourth century) is sporadically attested, the earliest certain traces of a church date only from the middle of the tenth century, when a church with a Greek cross-in-square plan was built in Alba Iulia and a Greek bishop was sent by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to convert the Tourkia, i.e. the Hungarians recently settled in Pannonia and its surroundings.12 Unfortunately, the ruins of Alba Iulia contain no traces of the separation of the sanctuary from the nave (a necessity specific to the Eastern Rite) such that this church could be seen as a prototype for later walled and wooden buildings. They have a particular feature that is generalized throughout the province, and found only in Transylvanian Romanian churches, namely two symmetrical13 entrances in the dividing wall between the nave and sanctuary.

14The oldest existing Orthodox walled churches, dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, are based on Western architectural styles brought to Transylvania by different religious orders. The double lancet openings for portals and windows, typical of both the Romanesque and Gothic styles, may also have been a source of inspiration for the builders of places of worship for Romanians. The first painters of these churches also came from diverse areas, and their work, as much as can still be known, illustrates a mixture of styles and influences.

15In the case of wooden churches, the sanctuary was most often separated from the nave by a solid wall, part of the architectural structure of the building, on which the iconographic program was painted directly or on which icons were fixed. From the sixteenth century, the templon-type iconostasis became widespread, consisting of an architrave used as a support for a series of small icons depicting feast scenes or representations of the apostles, below which were the large, so-called royal icons, and above them the Cross flanked by the sorrowful figures of the Mother of God and St. John the Evangelist (the so-called lypira icons).

Novelties of the Seventeenth Century

16We only have almost entirely preserved iconostases from the middle of the seventeenth century. The iconostasis with three entrances begins to spread in Transylvania, the oldest known being the iconostasis of the walled church of Hunedoara (Hung. Vajdahunyad, Hunedoara County) and the iconostasis of the wooden church of Lupșa Monastery (Alba County). The iconostasis of Hunedoara is dated 1654 and signed by Constantine, one of the two creators of the mural painting of the church of Hunedoara. Because of the very close stylistic and compositional links between the two iconostases, the one in Lupșa can be attributed to Stan, the second creator of the Hunedoara mural. At Lupșa, where the four royal icons, four feast icons, and the entire Deesis register (with Jesus and the 12 apostles seated on thrones, holding books and scrolls in their hands) have been preserved, they were most probably hung on the full wall separating the sanctuary from the nave. In Hunedoara there was a wooden structure from which a wide, semicircular plank has survived, serving as an architrave. Its rich carved ornamentation, for which the iconostasis of the Arnota Monastery, a foundation of voivode Neagoe Basarab from the same period, offers analogies, helps us to identify in the artistic environment of Wallachia both the place where the two painters were trained and the place from where the new iconostasis structure was brought to the southern half of Transylvania.

17The immediate impact of the iconostasis with three entrances on the surrounding realities can no longer be accurately estimated quantitatively, but the churches built in the second half of the seventeenth century in the area of the present counties of Hunedoara and Alba, certainly those that have survived, seem to prefer it to the old structure with two entrances. A contribution to its success must have been made both by the strong personalities of the archpriests of Hunedoara and neighbouring Ilia (Hung. Marosillye, Germ. Elienmarkt) (the latter being responsible for the construction or at least the restoration of 30 churches, possibly all the places of worship under his jurisdiction), and by the much closer relations with Wallachia of the metropolitans of that time. However, the installation in 1692 of the monumental and opulent iconostasis of the church of Făgăraș (Hung. Fogaras, Germ. Fogarasch) in Brașov County, financed by Constantine Brankovan, must have been decisive. With the stimulus of a voivodal foundation of unrivalled artistic quality in Transylvania, the iconostasis with a decoration that was, in height and length only, inspired by the Greek model, with three entrances and up to five superimposed registers (the royal icons, the festal icons, the apostles’ row, the prophets’ row, and the Crucifixion flanked by the lypira icons), was to gain increasing ground, becoming widespread in the eighteenth century in the southern half of Transylvania.

18In the northern half, the craftsmen, or at least the influences, continued to come predominantly from the southern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom. In general, only disparate icons survive, which we suspect were hung on the dividing wall between the nave and sanctuary. An independent structure, with two or three openings to the sanctuary, must have been found only in newly built churches, such as the only surviving templon-type iconostasis in the north-eastern part of the province. Part of a church originally destined for a small community in the hamlet of Dobra (Hung. Dobratanya, Mureș County), which changed its location three times and is now located in Dumbrava (Bistrița-Năsăud County), this iconostasis was painted in 1646 and travelled with the church, changing its dimensions and composition. In the version of it accessible today, it contains three movable royal icons and a long panel depicting the frieze of the apostles, with Christ enthroned in the middle, flanked by the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist and six apostles on each side, all in full figure, with various accessories in their hands. Above them, the Crucifixion is flanked by double fretworked lypira icons (see Fig. 1). These formal aspects, together with a number of compositional details and, above all, stylistic characteristics, allow us to attribute the iconostasis in question to a Ruthenian painter from the Przemyśl – Sanok – Nowy Sącz area.

Fig. 1. The iconostasis from Dumbrava (Bistrița-Năsăud County)

Fig. 1. The iconostasis from Dumbrava (Bistrița-Năsăud County)

Ruthenian painter, 1646. Credits: Sergiu Petru Timbuș.

  • 14  Baboș Alexandru, “Icoana pe pânză Patimile lui Hristos din Sârbi Susani, Maramureș, o lucrare din (...)

19The new model of iconostasis, or perhaps more correctly its iconography, was widespread and long-lasting. Their success is recorded even among communities that only repaired their churches in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not having sufficient resources to build new ones. In several such cases, the long frieze of the apostles was painted on canvas and fixed to the full wall that continued to separate the nave from the sanctuary for a long time.14 Such a technical solution was also borrowed from Ukrainian painters, who used to paint the upper registers of iconostases on large canvases, which were then attached to the wall. This made the work easier for the masters, and the images, usually painted in a restrained colour scheme, resembled wall paintings. From the same milieu came the idea of painting the upper registers directly on the wall, a trend that can be observed in Ukrainian iconostases from the second half of the seventeenth century to the eighteenth century. In Transylvania we have numerous examples that were realized throughout the eighteenth century and even into the nineteenth century.

Features of the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Iconostasis

  • 15  Ovsiichuk Volodimir (Овсійчук Володимир), Українське мистецтво другої пол. XVI – першої половини X (...)

20The development of the Ukrainian iconostasis in the seventeenth century was marked by quite radical changes. During this period, the high multi-tiered iconostasis became established, in which, in addition to the traditional four tiers – the Sovereign, Festal, Prayer (Deesis), and Prophets tiers – there could be additional tiers featuring scenes from the Passion of Christ or a tier with scenes depicting the gospel events of the Sundays of Pentecost. At the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, significant changes also appeared in the structure of the iconostasis. At that time, particularly in Lviv, a significant amount of construction occurred, prompted by a great fire in the city in 1527, in which medieval Lviv was destroyed. The new architecture had distinct Renaissance features, which had also spread here thanks to Italian architects who came to the region.15

  • 16  Bokalo Igor (Бокало Ігор), Diba Iurii (Диба Юрій), Реконструкція іконостаса Успенської церкви у Ль (...)

21Renaissance architectural elements were transferred into the structure and decoration of local iconostases. A striking example of this is the iconostasis of the Assumption Church in Lviv, constructed in the 1620s at the expense of the church brotherhood and donations from the Moldavian and Wallachian rulers.16 The grand iconostasis stood out with its structure, where vertical and horizontal elements were adorned with masterful Renaissance-style carving. The iconostasis featured cornices and carved columns, and in the upper tier, icons of the prophets were embedded into decorative medallions with intricate carving. The icons in this iconostasis were framed in deep frames, often in the form of arches with decorative low-relief carving. Most importantly, in the lower tier of the iconostasis, depth was introduced. The openings of the royal and deacon’s doors, designed as arch-like portals that imitated the entrance portals of residential and sacred architecture, were given depth. Additional images appeared on the door frames of these portals. These new features in the construction of the iconostasis quickly spread across all Ukrainian lands. By the middle of the seventeenth century, Italian Renaissance motifs in the carving of the iconostasis were replaced by Northern Netherlandish Mannerist decor, and later by Baroque.

22The leading centre of icon painting in the second half of the seventeenth century and first half of the eighteenth century was the Kyiv school at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. However, icon painters were also active in Chernihiv, Poltava, Romny, Myrhorod, and other larger and smaller towns of the Ukrainian Cossack regiments and military settlements. The reputation of Cossack masters of church art spread beyond the borders of Ukrainian lands to neighbouring Muscovy and Moldavia-Wallachia. The style of “Cossack Baroque” absorbed techniques from Western European Baroque combined with local folk ornamentation traditions. Baroque, with its lavish aesthetics of ornamentation, symbolism, and allegories, was very well suited to the mentality of the Ukrainians, who loved luxurious and expensive clothing and beautiful singing, and sought to embellish God’s house in the best way possible. The spread of Baroque in art was also supported by Ukrainian theologians, including Ioanykiy Halyatovskyi, Lazar Baranovych, Antoniy Radyvylovskyi, and Dmytro Tuptalo, who wrote treatises in the lavish Baroque style, using complex comparisons and symbolism.

  • 17  Dorofienko I. (Дорофієнко І.), Miliaeva L., (Міляєва, Л.), Rutkovs’ka O. (Рутковська О.), Авт.-упо (...)
  • 18  Umantsev F. (Уманцев Ф.), Троїцька надбрамна церква Києво-Печерської лаври [The gate-church of the (...)

23Almost all the iconostases from the period of Cossack Baroque were destroyed in the nineteenth century by Russian authorities and during the Soviet era to erase the memory of Ukrainian art. Beautiful eighteenth century iconostases have survived in the villages of Velyki Sorochyntsi in the Poltava region,17 in Kozelets in the Chernihiv region, and in the Trinity Over-the-Gate Church of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.18

  • 19  Olianina, “Catholic Counter-Reformation Art Forms Serving the Revival of Ukrainian Orthodoxy,” op. (...)

24Justified theologically in the entourage of Metropolitan Peter Mohyla of Kyiv,19 the Ukrainian Baroque iconostasis, with its abundant carved decoration, spectacular growth in height, and three-dimensional appearance, was one of the key elements of the explosion by which Ukrainian art, using various distribution channels, invaded the everyday world of Orthodoxy throughout southeastern Europe.

The Iconostasis of Strâmba Monastery: A Turning Point in the Development of Iconostases in Transylvania?

25The Romanian origins of the great hierarch Peter Mohyla, whose name is linked to the revival of the Orthodox Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom, his always close contacts with Moldavia and the close contacts of Moldavia with Transylvania, as well as the equally frequent contacts of Transylvanian Romanians with the Ruthenian milieu, are realities that could explain an early penetration into Transylvania, as early as the second half of the seventeenth century, of the new way of separating the sanctuary from the nave. So far, the earliest attestation dates back to 1700, and it was found in a modest wooden church hidden in the forests of western Transylvania, in Sălaj County. This was known either as Strâmba Monastery, a name derived from the stream in the Strâmba Valley that flows nearby, or Fizeș Monastery, which derives from the names of the villages on the outskirts of which it was founded: Füzes (today Stupini) and Füzes Szent Péter (today Sânpetru Almașului).

  • 20  Another name of Strâmba Monastery.
  • 21  The name of the Samar Monastery comes from a tributary of the Dnipro, Samar, on the banks of which (...)

26Thus, according to an inscription placed on either side of the royal doors, at the bottom of the supporting doorposts, in 1700 the abbot of the Dumbrăvița Monastery,20 the Cossack Domentiyan, who came from the Samar Monastery,21 paid for the painting of those doorposts and other decorative works. At the expense of the same abbot Domentiyan, in 1742, the elder Melkhisedek repainted those doorposts, which are in fact the planks with which the depth of the entrance was obtained, which thus took the form of a portal (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Inside of the Strâmba Monastery church

Fig. 2. Inside of the Strâmba Monastery church

The left door frame of the royal gates, painted in 1700 and repainted in 1742 by the older Melkhisedek. Credits: Ana Dumitran.

27Today, of all that may have existed at Strâmba at the time of the arrival of the Ukrainian monks, only these planks and an icon of the Virgin and Child painted in the 1670s, also by a Ruthenian icon-painter, remain. The monastery church was rebuilt in 1772, and the present iconostasis, in the form of a full wall but made of slabs rather than beams, probably dates from 1772.

  • 22  Godea Ioan, Cristache-Panait Ioana, Monumente istorice bisericești din Eparhia Oradiei. Județele B (...)

28Divided into five registers separated by profiled elements, this iconostasis seems to have been painted in three stages. The only dated register, dated 1785, is that of the royal icons, to which the icons below the royal icons can be linked. Their author, a painter whose other works are unknown, shows a good mastery of the brush and a great artistic sensitivity. His manner and iconography belong to the Ukrainian Baroque. The scene of the Crucifixion and the frieze of the Apostles were painted directly on the plank structure, together with the nave and the pronaos, the painting of which is dated 1792 by the inscription above the entrance to the nave, on the inside. Its presumed author is a local, Ioan Pop from Românași,22 who took over, in a rustic manner, the iconography brought to the area by painters originally from or at least trained in the workshops of Galicia. The festal icons, with a different colouring, also seem to belong to him, but were made at a later date. The royal doors, by a particularly gifted carver, were made in 1792 rather than 1785.

29Access to the sanctuary is through three entrances, the middle one being decorated on the edges with boards showing the restored Melkhisedek painting. They are the only elements that give depth to the structure; otherwise it would have been in the earlier pattern developed at the suggestion of Metropolitan Peter Mohyla. Although Elder Melkhisedek’s inscription speaks of several ornaments made under the supervision of Abbot Domentiyan, only the frame of the royal doors has survived and, because of its perfect fit in the opening it decorates, it is to be believed that the dimensions of the opening were determined by the dimensions of the planks that were to decorate it and not that they were adjusted to fit a pre-existing outline. This detail shows the importance attached to them, because of their unusual shape, or at least because of the information contained in the inscriptions, a sign that in 1772 they still mattered to the monastery’s inhabitants.

  • 23  Șematismul veneratului cler al Archidiecesei Metropolitane Greco-Catolice Române de Alba-Iulia și (...)

30Both explanations may be equally justified, for Strâmba, the oldest monastery in the western parts of Transylvania, with the largest land holdings of all the monasteries in Transylvania,23 must have enjoyed a certain authority over the faithful and potential founders in the area, and the presence of Ukrainian monks in the last decades of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century represented a peak period in its existence. As for the painted ornaments commissioned by Abbot Domentiyan, the demarcation of the frame of the imperial doors from the doors themselves in Melkhisedek’s description is a sign that the doors were due to an earlier generation of founders, and that the frame embellished an earlier iconostasis. Also, its preservation in the structure of the new iconostasis is an indication that this type of decoration had come to be noticed and desired in the area, even though entire structures in the new Ukrainian fashion seem to have been placed only in the second half of the eighteenth century. It is for this reason that Domentiyan’s initiative – although situated almost seven decades after the initiative of Metropolitan Peter Mohyla and framed by the more than modest material condition of the potential Transylvanian patrons – acquires a special importance in the artistic landscape of the western part of the province. Painters trained in provincial workshops in the south of the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom have always circulated here, but more often than not they were merely the vehicles of iconographic models and decorative elements that had long become obsolete in their homeland. Lacking sufficient funds for a large-scale work or the craftsmen capable of executing it, Domentiyan himself could only hint at the monumentality that an iconostasis could embody when the painting penetrated even into the depth of its forms. He had, however, both the authority and the theological competence for a beginning which, in other parts of Transylvania, occurred only half a century later.

The Three-Dimensional Iconostasis of Cormaia Monastery

31Thus, for the earliest Transylvanian three-dimensional iconostasis preserved in its entirety we must turn our attention to the areas neighbouring Moldavia, more precisely to the wooden church of Cormaia Monastery, near Sângeorz-Băi (Hung. Naszódszentgyörgy, Germ. Rumänisch-Sankt-Görgen) in Bistrița-Năsăud County. Restored by the priest Constantine of Sângeorz, who became the monk Climent, possibly at the behest of a former Moldavian bishop of Rădăuți, a traveller through Transylvania, the monastery took over a traveling church, which changed its location several times in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The iconostasis (see Fig. 3) seems to have taken over three older icons, signed by the painter Tudor, painted at the order of a certain priest Ion, son of the priest Matei from Lăpuș (Hung. Oláhlápos). The donation inscription does not tell us where the priest Ion was, but the subject of the icon of the feast, the Pokrov, locates the church near Sângeorz, if it was not the church brought by the priest Constantine to become the new church of the monastery. Interesting for us, however, is Ion’s origin from Lăpuș, i.e. from the same area as Strâmba Monastery, where we have seen that priests and painters of Ukrainian origin were active. Tudor himself, despite the provincial character of his painting, was formed in a Ukrainian environment, as evidenced by the features of Christ’s physiognomy and the decoration of the branches of his icons. However, the contribution of the second, as yet anonymous, painter at Cormaia, who dates his work to 1751, is important. It is difficult to say who took the initiative to three-dimensionalize the iconostasis: the painter, the founder, the pilgrim bishop, or simply the fact that the church was close to Moldavia, where such structures had long been commonplace. What is certain is that the message conveyed refers explicitly to the origins of this architectural structure, by the full-figure depictions on the door frames of the royal gates of St. Anthony and St. Theodosius of the Caves, the founder of the monastery and builder of the Assumption Church of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. Both depictions are painted after engravings from the liturgical books of the Lavra press. On the scroll of St. Anthony, there is an inscription in Ukrainian, which also appeared on the engravings of liturgical books: “Lord, may there be a blessing at this place of this holy monastery.” Similarly, on the scroll of St. Theodosius, we read: “Lord, in the name of Your Most Holy Mother, in this town will be a temple.” In general, the revival of reverence for the Kyiv monastic founders is linked to the increased activity of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, particularly its printing press, and the educational work of Metropolitan Peter Mohyla.

Fig. 3. The iconostasis from Cormaia (Bistrița-Năsăud County)

Fig. 3. The iconostasis from Cormaia (Bistrița-Năsăud County)

Unknown painter, 1751, with royal icons painted by Tudor in the first decades of the eighteenth century. Credits: Daniel Constantinescu.

A Source of Inspiration: The Iconostasis of Certege

32The central parts of Transylvania and in particular the painters active in the communities of the Western Carpathians had, since 1752, a model to which they had more or less consciously referred for a century: the iconostasis in the wooden church of Certege (Hung. Csertés) in Alba County (see Fig. 4), richly carved by a Romanian craftsman who described himself as “Ion tâmplariu,” i.e. iconostasis carver, originally from Wallachia, probably from Câmpulung, active in Transylvania for several decades. The Ukrainian Baroque iconostasis of Certege was made possible by the contribution of the painter Vasilie Zboroski. The inscription with his signature and all the texts reproduced on the components of the Certege iconostasis are in Romanian, a sign either that someone prepared them for him to be painted, or that he knew this language, either as a Romanian or as one who lived for a long time among the Romanians and learned their language. So far, the only known work is the iconostasis of Certege, a village in the gold field administered by the Habsburg state, a community whose economic potential grew spectacularly during the eighteenth century, so that it periodically called on important painters of the time to adorn its church: Popa Ivan and Nistor from Rășinari in 1720, Vasilie Zboroski in 1752, Stefan Tenetskii in 1798.

Fig. 4. The iconostasis from Certege (Alba County), at its last location, in the Orthodox church of the Mănăștur quarter in Cluj-Napoca

Fig. 4. The iconostasis from Certege (Alba County), at its last location, in the Orthodox church of the Mănăștur quarter in Cluj-Napoca

Vasilie Zboroski, painter, and Ion from Câmpulung, sculptor, 1752. Credits: Ana Dumitran.

  • 24  Dumitran Ana, “Ukrainian Features in Transylvanian Icon Painting in the 18th Century,” in Ana Dumi (...)
  • 25  Terdik (ed.), The Light of Thy Countenance, op. cit., p. 179; Véghseő Tamás, Terdik Szilveszter, H (...)
  • 26  Nedici, “An Artistic Melting Pot,” op. cit., p. 286.

33How did the people of Certege come to contract Vasilie Zboroski, and what role could the sculptor Ion from Wallachia have played in this? All that can be said with certainty is that the two were in Certege at the same time and that in the same year they also received a joint commission from the important Romanian community in a neighbouring village, Lupșa.24 Subsequently, Ion collaborated with other local or itinerant painters in Transylvania who showed an interest in Ukrainian Baroque, whose influences were already penetrating Transylvania from both Moldavia and Banat, which was closely linked to Serbia. Ion’s sculpture, with its strong relief and decorative motifs that do not derive from the art of the so-called Brankovan iconostasis, also needed an apprenticeship in an artistic environment where these characteristics had already been assimilated. Was he on the team of the sculptor Constantinos Thaliodoros Constantinopolitanus, who was commissioned by the Habsburg authorities to create the iconostases for the three Greek-Catholic cathedrals in the Empire: Oradea (Hung. Nagyvárad, Germ. Großwardein) in Partium (1747–1748), Máriapócs in Hungary (1748–1749), and Blaj (Hung. Balázsfalva, Germ. Blasendorf) in Transylvania (1750–1751)?25 The latest scholarly information on the latter work shows Constantinos as eager to return to his family in Wallachia.26 He could, therefore, also have had apprentices from Câmpulung, whom he could have taken with him to Hungary and Transylvania, where they could then have undertaken their own work and collaborated with local painters.

34Returning to Vasilie Zboroski, one cannot fail to be struck by the similarity between his name and that of the five settlements called Zborów, then still all within Poland: two in the Greater Poland Voivodeship, west-central Poland, one in central Poland, one in south-central Poland, and one near Lviv, where Vasilie might have found the most favourable environment for appropriating the high quality of learning evidenced by the iconostasis at Certege, but where the large number of artists often constituted a reason to look for work a long distance away. In contrast to other contemporary Ukrainian painters, he seems not to have been so interested in the new Kyivan models of royal icons, with figures seated on sumptuous thrones, with volute-shaped arms and legs, and high backs composed of sophisticated streamlined forms. At Certege he used such thrones to seat the apostles. Instead, Christ Pantokrator, the Virgin and Child, and St. Nicholas were depicted as busts, but an impressive decorative repertoire was used for their vestments, which reached the height of refinement through the intense movement of craftsmen and models between Moscow and Kyiv. Perhaps precisely because of this abundance of detail, two of them, that of the Savior and St. Nicholas, attracted the particular attention of Transylvanian Romanian painters. The icon of the Mother of God was not as successful because it was precisely in those years that the reproduction of the miraculous icon that was moved by the Jesuits from Nicula to Cluj and transformed into a veritable palladium of the province was in vogue. The fourth icon, due to its subject, the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, could not have become a model in a territory where the most frequent patron saint of churches was the Archangel Michael.

35Thanks to the Habsburg state’s investment in the mining industry, the economic progress of the communities in the Western Carpathians was soon reflected in the appearance of their churches. Numerous wall churches replaced the wooden buildings, and famous painters of the time were called in to paint and decorate them with iconostases. The spirit of the Baroque stimulated the creativity of artists, leading many of them to abandon the Brankovan style in which they had been trained in southern Transylvania or even in Wallachia, or to adopt at least part of the new fashion, which was both modernizing/Westernizing (in keeping with the location of the new capital, Vienna) and traditional (due to the adoption of the Baroque aesthetic by the neighbouring Orthodox peoples in the first half of the eighteenth century: Russians, Serbs, and Romanians from Moldavia and Wallachia, who were walking in the deep footsteps previously traced by Ukrainian painters).

  • 27  Cojocaru, “The Painter Grigorie Popovici and His Master Jovan,” op. cit., p. 249–316.
  • 28  The files introduced by Cristina Cojocaru in RICONTRANS Project’s database, https://isl.ics.forth. (...)

36In this particularly effervescent economic and artistic context, the Romanian icon painters adapted to the new expectations and models, especially when they could be delivered by painters such as Vasilie Zboroski and Stefan Tenetskii in Transylvania, and Jovan Cetirević Grabovan27 and even some Russian painters in Moldavia and Wallachia.28 The problem in the spread of the Baroque iconostasis was not, however, the pace of adaptation of the painters (a process that continued until the turn from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century), but the lack of sculptors who could adapt to the new painting style or, perhaps more correctly, to the very high cost of carving an iconostasis. That is why the new painting style continued to be placed directly on the dividing wall between the nave and apse, or was confined in particular to the royal icons, which were set upon the old structures in place of the earlier icons.

  • 29  Dumitran, “Ukrainian Features in Transylvanian Icon Painting,” op. cit., p. 314–315.

37Most of the artistic vestiges modelled on the work of Vasilie Zboroski from Certege fall into the latter category. They are usually disparate icons, some of an impressive artistic quality, such as those painted between the 1770s and 1790s by Gheorghe, son of Iacov, for the churches of Albac, Berghin, Coșlariu, Galda de Sus, Hopârta, Întregalde, Mesentea, Noșlac, Geoagiu de Sus Monastery, Râmeț Monastery, Sartăș, and Valea Uzei; by Simon Oprovici for the churches of Alba Iulia and Ighiel; and by Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu and his disciples, especially Nicolae Corcheș, for several churches in the Western Carpathians (all in Alba County). Less successful, but no less eager to fit into the new canon, are the icons by Ion from Beriu painted for the churches of Geogel, Ponor, and Mogoș-Miclești (in Alba County); by the younger brother of Gheorghe, son of Iacov, Popa Nicolae from Feisa, painted for the churches of Găbud and Cetatea de Baltă (Alba County) and Abuș (Mureș County); by their father, Iacov from Rășinari, painted for the churches of Mesentea and Gârbova de Sus (Alba County) and Cuci (Mureș County); and by their uncle, Stan from Rășinari, commissioned by numerous churches in Hunedoara County. There are many more examples, and the names of the painters are not always known.29

A Difficult Model to Recognize: The Iconostasis of the Greek-Catholic Cathedral in Blaj

  • 30  Nedici, “An Artistic Melting Pot,” op. cit., p. 284–288.
  • 31  Dumitran Ana, “Pictura românească în județul Alba până la mijlocul secolului al XIX-lea. Demersuri (...)
  • 32  Nedici, “An Artistic Melting Pot,” op. cit., p. 283, 287.
  • 33  Dumitran, Hegedűs, Rus, Fecioarele înlăcrimate ale Transilvaniei, op. cit., p. 129.

38Discussions for hiring the sculptor Constantinos Thaliodoros Constantinopolitanos began in 1748, his work being quite probably completed by the end of 1750.30 The iconostasis is composed of five registers, three of which (of the royal icons, the icons of feasts and the apostles) are the work of the painter Stefan Tenetskii from Arad. The register of the prophets is signed in 1764 by Grigore Ranite, from Craiova, the son of one of Constantine Brankovan’s painters. Perhaps at the same time, but by a different hand, the crowning was also painted (see Fig. 5). Three decades earlier, in 1737, Ranite had already painted an iconostasis in Blaj, the one in the chapel of the bishop’s palace,31 and in 1749 he had been invited to paint the cathedral and the future iconostasis, which Constantinos was not commissioned to carve until January 14, 1750.32 The mural was never completed, possibly for lack of funds, and Ranite would not return to Blaj until the spring of 1764, brought back by the fame of the weeping of the icon of the Virgin and Child, which he had painted in 1737. Sent in August 1764 to Sibiu for the investigation of the miracle and from there to Vienna, from where it never returned, the icon was replaced in September 1764 with a copy, which was also requested from Ranite.33

Fig. 5. The iconostasis from Greek Catholic Cathedral in Blaj (Alba County)

Fig. 5. The iconostasis from Greek Catholic Cathedral in Blaj (Alba County)

Constantinos Thaliodoros, sculptor, 1750–1751; painters: Stefan Tenetskii (before September 1765), Grigore Ranite (the prophets’ row, 1764), and an unknown painter (the cross). Credits: Radu Nedici.

  • 34  Micu Samuil, Istoria românilor [History of the Romanians], Ediţie princeps după manuscris de Ioan (...)
  • 35  Ibid., p. 348.
  • 36  Medeleanu Horia, “Pictorul Ştefan Teneţchi. Viaţa şi opera” [The Painter Stefan Tenetskii. Life an (...)

39In that context, Ranite also painted the upper part of the iconostasis, without it being clear whether that was when the painting of the monumental ensemble began or was completed. According to the confessions of Samuil Micu, a contemporary monk, “in 1765, on the first day of January, the fathers of the monastery of the Holy Trinity, even though the templon was not yet painted, began to serve the liturgy in the great church of the monastery, without the knowledge and blessing of the bishop named Athanasie (Rednic), who was in Vienna.”34 Since the consecration of the cathedral did not take place until September 14, 1765,35 we should conclude that the rest of the painting was painted after the contribution of Grigore Ranite. About its author, Stefan Tenetskii, a painter of undoubted Kyivan training, who worked in Serbia in the company of Kyivan painters invited by the Metropolitan of Karlovci, it has been estimated that he needed about two years to paint an iconostasis.36 If the estimate is correct, then eight months could not have been enough to complete the work. On the other hand, Samuil Micu’s assertion is not entirely accurate either, as by January 1, 1765 the upper part of the iconostasis was certainly painted, and perhaps a large part of the rest of the registers as well.

  • 37  Porumb Marius, Un veac de pictură românească din Transilvania. Secolul XVIII [A Century of Romania (...)
  • 38  Bunea Augustin, Episcopii Petru Paul Aron și Dionisiu Novacovici sau istoria românilor transilvăne (...)
  • 39  Terdik Szilveszter, “Marian Symbols on the Iconostasis of the Cathedral of Blaj,” Apulum, LII, ser (...)

40On February 5, 1765 the former resident in the episcopal see, Inochentie Micu, offered “four large templon icons” that were in his home in Blaj, to be mounted “in the new church.”37 In exile in Rome since 1745, from where he had been trying to regain his office, the former bishop – who had laid the foundation stone of the cathedral in 1741 – could have been well informed, which would mean that in January 1765 the only icons missing from the iconostasis of the cathedral were the royal icons, without which the holy liturgy could not be celebrated. In the same year, the monastery of Blaj paid 1,102 florins to a German painter and 100 florins to a Serbian painter, out of its own income. The information was published in 1902, citing sources from the diocesan archives, which no one has seen since.38 It is therefore impossible to know whether the two ethnic qualifiers were applied by the historian who saw the documents and showed no interest in the exact names of the two painters, who may have been difficult to read, or whether they were actually part of the description of the recipients of the money. We are inclined to believe the first, otherwise the “Serb” would have to be Tenetskii, who really came from Serbian territory and settled in Arad, where he was in the good graces of the local Serbian bishop. But associating the sums he received with the work he did, it is clear that the appellation “Serb” corresponds to Grigore Ranite, whose name, derived from that of his father, Hranite, has a real Slavic resonance. However, if we compare the sums, a mere 100 florins seems too little in relation to the surface area painted, even if it is true that it did not require the same effort as the registers that Tenetskii’s did. The possibility that the 100 florins were also intended for Tenetskii as a final payment should not be ruled out, but the redaction of the documents misled the researcher, who thus doubled the identity of the recipient of the money.39

  • 40  Medeleanu, “Pictorul Ştefan Teneţchi,” op. cit., p. 366–368.

41Giving the same degree of credibility to all this information, it would mean that Stefan Tenetskii had already contracted the work before Grigore Ranite returned to Blaj. But perhaps his fiery temper40 and the impeccable quality of his craftsmanship would have tried the patience of the recipients, who thought of hiring a collaborator or perhaps even two, since the colouring and the manner in which Christ is represented on the arms of the cross are not in keeping with either Ranite’s or Tenetskii’s painting. To what extent this decision to divide the painters’ contribution was simply a consequence of the misunderstandings that were sweeping the United Church from within, or of the fame that suddenly enveloped the author of a miraculous icon, or of the realization that the modernity of sculpture called for a fresh, lively painting, like Grigore Ranite’s had never been, is impossible to determine now. How Tenetskii came to Blaj, too, we still have no information.

The Iconostasis of the Church of St. Paraskeva in Rășinari

  • 41  Abrudan, “The Pious Paraskevi Church in Rășinari,” op. cit., p. 32–33.

42The church of St. Paraskeva in Rășinari was the first cathedral of the Orthodox bishopric of Transylvania, reactivated in 1761 and placed under the Serbian bishop of Buda. The church was built with an important contribution from the Greek-Catholic bishop Petru Pavel Aron, who consecrated it most probably in the spring of 1757. The church was soon occupied by the Orthodox, who, in 1758, commissioned its exterior painting by the local painters Popa Ivan and Nistor Dascălul. Grigore Ranite was invited to paint the interior, who, together with his son Ioan Grigorovici, began the work in 1760 and finished it in 1763. In parallel with the mural painting, the icons for the iconostasis were also painted, the realization of which spans the entire period: the earliest dating, 1760, was found on the patron saint icon, the royal icons were dated 1762, and the icon of St. Nicholas in 1763. One of the feast icons bears the date 1761. The four icons for the women’s iconostasis in the narthex were also painted in this year. Two of them, of St. Nicholas and St. Paraskeva, are today on the iconostasis in place of the others that were fraudulently stolen at the end of the last century41 (see Fig. 6). Slightly larger than the opening left in the structure of the iconostasis, they bear the same carved decoration on the frame as the previous icons, of which only that of St. Nicholas, painted in 1763, survives. The preparation of the panels by the same sculptor who also carved the iconostasis, the aforementioned Ion from Câmpulung, is thus a certainty.

Fig. 6. The iconostasis from Saint Paraskeva Church in Rășinari (Sibiu County)

Fig. 6. The iconostasis from Saint Paraskeva Church in Rășinari (Sibiu County)

Sculptor: Ion from Câmpulung, c.1757–1760. Painters: Grigore Ranite, 1760–1763 (now only two of the royal icons); Gheorghe, son of Iacov, and Ioan Grigorovici, 1784–1785; unknown painter, 1795 (the cross). Credits: Ana Dumitran.

  • 42  Ibid., p. 43.

43The not very stylistically edifying contribution of the sculptor and the Brankovan-style painting of Grigore Ranite contradict a discourse about Ukrainian influences on the liturgical furnishings in the church of Rășinari. Having studied in Kyiv and accustomed to the pomp and opulence of Ukrainian art, the Serbian bishop Dionysius Novacovich probably thought the same during his residence in Rășinari between 1762 and 1767. But the problems of the diocese he took under his administration were too great, and the work to embellish the church, initiated before his arrival and entrusted to a painter with important friends in the community, was too far advanced to intervene. The short tenure of his successor and the long periods of sedes vacante that framed it were not favourable to investment in the aesthetics of the church. Nor had the exterior painting been finished. But things changed as soon as the leadership of the diocese returned to the energetic bishop Gideon Nikitich. The work on the westward extension of the church and on the monumentality of the church by raising the tower began immediately after 1783, in parallel with the work on bringing the iconostasis in line with the taste of a hierarch subject to the Serbian Metropolitan of Karlovci. The structure of the iconostasis and a new set of icons, except for two of the royal icons and the royal doors, were repainted by “Georgie from Cacova Aiudului and priest Niț from Ghijasa de Sus,” i.e. Gheorghe, the son of painter Iacov from Rășinari, whose residence was at that time near Aiud (Hung. Nagyenyed, Germ. Strassburg am Mieresch), and the son of Grigore Ranite, Ion Grigorovici, who had meanwhile become a priest in Ghijasa de Sus (Hung. Felsőgezés, Germ. Obergesäß), near Sibiu. The painting started from top to bottom, the year 1784 being mentioned on the scrolls being unrolled by two of the prophets. In 1785 the feast icons and the royal icons were painted, and probably also the deacon’s doors. The series of apostles would thus correspond to 1784. The crowning belongs to another stage of baroquization of the church, in 1795, when the pulpit, from which the dating was taken, was placed; probably other pieces of furniture were also made by the carver Franz Eberhardt and the painter Joseph Neuhauser.42

Other Experiences and Encounters with Ukrainian Baroque

  • 43  Zintz Maria, Pictura murală a bisericilor românești din Țara Făgărașului în secolul al XVIII-lea ș (...)

44Romanian painting from Transylvania in the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century has not been systematically studied, precisely because of its Westernized aspect, considered a sign of decadence. There is at most a quantification of the most representative works of the better-known painters, but very few of them have benefited from monographic studies, which in any case only deal with painting within the limits of its belonging to the legacy of the era of Constantine Brankovan.43 The punctual study of the penetration of Westernizing influences and their identification in the work of each icon painter is only just beginning, and the volume of information is immense, so at this time any comment is possible only in relation to a specific work or to the work as a whole of a painter who has already received attention, but without exploiting his spirit of innovation.

45In the first case, let us focus on the iconostasis in the wall church of Avrig (Hung. Felek, Germ. Freck) in Sibiu County, created in 1807, painted by Teodor and his son, Sava, two painters about whom we have no documentary information (see Fig. 7). Here, the apostles in the Deesis tier are depicted in mannered poses, holding the instruments of the Passion against the background of a landscape (without gilding). On the deacon doors of the iconostasis, there are full-figure depictions of the Old Testament high priests Aaron and Melkhizedek, which were typical for Ukrainian iconostases in the seventeenth century. For instance, we should mention the iconostasis of the 1640s in the Church of St. Paraskeva in Lviv, part of the funds for the reconstruction of which after the fire were donated by Moldavian rulers. In the iconography of the festal tier icons in the church in Avrig, there are clear signs of Baroque style and Catholic iconography, which spread in both Ukrainian and Romanian icons of the eighteenth century. These influences in icon painting often came through engravings in liturgical books. For example, an angel is depicted flying on a cloud, kneeling, and the Virgin Mary is also kneeling. Christ the High Priest in the centre of the Deesis tier is depicted wearing a pear-shaped mitre, which was typical for Ukrainian bishops in the eighteenth century. It is noteworthy that similar mitres are depicted on Christ in several other iconostases in churches of Transylvania. These include the churches of Bârsău Mare (Sălaj County, 1789), Brâncovenești (Hung. Marosvécs, Germ. Wetsch) (Mureș County, eighteenth-century iconostasis), Gersa (Bistrița-Năsăud County, 1782), Brebi (Sălaj County, 1780, see Fig. 8) and Porț (Sălaj County, iconostasis from the end of the eighteenth century, see Fig. 9). In the framing of the icons in the iconostasis of the Avrig church, we also see Baroque techniques: the top of the deep frames of the Deesis icons is in the shape of a trefoil, and around the frame, twisted columns with carving decorate the sides. These decorative framing techniques are also typical of Baroque Ukrainian iconostases.

Fig. 7. The iconostasis from Avrig (Sibiu County)

Fig. 7. The iconostasis from Avrig (Sibiu County)

Unknown sculptor; painters: Teodor and his son, Sava, 1807. Credits: Ana Dumitran.

Fig. 8. The iconostasis from Brebi (Sălaj County)

Fig. 8. The iconostasis from Brebi (Sălaj County)

Ukrainian workshop, 1780, repainted in the twentieth century. Credits: Bogdan Ilieș.

Fig. 9. The iconostasis from Porț (Sălaj County)

Fig. 9. The iconostasis from Porț (Sălaj County)

Ukrainian workshop, end of the eighteenth century. Credits: Bogdan Ilieș.

  • 44  Dumitran Daniel, forthcoming, “Returning to the Subject of the History of an Absence: The Greek Co (...)

46In the second case, the best example is the work of Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu from Abrud, who was the beneficiary of at least three directions of transmission of Ukrainian art in Transylvania: that represented by Andraș Bodor, Vasilie Zboroski and Stefan Tenetskii, to which can be added a fourth, this time coming through the South Carpathian route, represented by Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu’s collaboration with the painter Dimitrie Dimitriu from Bucharest in the last decade of his life (the 1820s), which was continued for another two decades by his namesake son, Simion Silaghi. He would thus represent the quintessence of Ukrainian influences on Transylvanian Romanian painting, which he appropriated in stages and disseminated during five decades of personal activity, to which can be added another two decades of activity of the workshop he founded, during which time the most important painter in the team was Dimitrie Dimitriu. It is thus easy to trace the evolution from painting the apostles seated on the iconostasis wall, seated on banquettes under arches, as in the Brankovan iconostases, but with a lively dialog and facial expressions typical of provincial Ruthenian art (Bica, Cluj County, 1774), to painting (also on the iconostasis wall) the apostles in full figure, seated on the steps of a staircase ascending towards the enthroned Christ, in a free composition, which includes, in a second, higher plane, the scene of the Coronation of the Virgin, flanked by archangels holding various attributes in their hands, including the Mandylion (Goiești, Alba County, 1790, see Fig. 10). He painted iconostases with architectural structures of a certain complexity, but only towards the end of his life and only for walled churches, the largest and best preserved being the one in the so-called “Greek” church in Alba Iulia. Patronized by prosperous Macedo-Vlachs merchants, the church – belonging to the Orthodox denomination – was built intra muros after numerous approaches to Vienna, which were only completed after the freedom conferred by the Edict of Religious Tolerance of 1781.44 The iconostasis, which over time has remained the most precious ornament of this place of worship, with its richly carved decoration, has five registers: that of icons on the basement, below the royal icons; that of the royal icons, which follow Russian models; that of the apostles, depicted as full figures in oval panels grouped in pairs; that of the prophets, depicted as busts in circular medallions placed in the form of a wreath; and the canopy with the Cross. A characteristic feature of Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu’s iconostases seems to be the absence of feast icons, which are not given space, not even as movable pieces, neither on the iconostasis wall nor in the architectural structures themselves. The name of the sculptor is unknown, but he was undoubtedly an artist well-practiced in Baroque forms, whom Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu’s team had commissioned on other occasions, in particular for the making of the royal doors with lyre-shaped panels, found in several churches in the Western Carpathians.

Fig. 10. The iconostasis from Goiești (Alba County)

Fig. 10. The iconostasis from Goiești (Alba County)

Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu, 1790. Credits: Mircea Rareș Țetcu.

  • 45 Abrudan Ioan Ovidiu, “Dimitrie Dimitriu, the Painter from Wallachia,” Brukenthal. Acta Musei, VI, n(...)

47The enlarged team of his namesake son, Simion Silaghi (a painter lacking in talent, but possibly a good entrepreneur, since he managed to continue his work and to keep with him names of notoriety in the period), realized the most lavish iconostasis and one of the last that can still be associated with the Ukrainian Baroque, the one from Bucium-Izbita (Alba County), dated 1836 (see Fig. 11). Its main author was the aforementioned Dimitrie Dimitriu, who signed the painting together with Simion Silaghi from Abrud and Anton Șimon from Cluj. The sculptor, Iosif Bârsan from Rășinari, was responsible for the realization of the wooden structure, with its classicizing appearance. It is interesting, however, that only three years earlier, when the same Dimitrie Dimitriu painted the iconostasis of the Holy Trinity Church in Rășinari, the sculptor was Petru Ștefan, who worked in the house of the priest Daniil Popovici Barcianu,45 a sign that he was not a local man. For both iconostases, of an unusual monumentality for Transylvania, the icon models were chosen from the repertoire of Russian painters, with whom Dimitrie Dimitriu most probably came into contact in the monastic environment of Cernica and Căldărușani Monasteries, where he supposedly completed his apprenticeship.

Fig. 11. The iconostasis from Bucium-Izbita (Alba County)

Fig. 11. The iconostasis from Bucium-Izbita (Alba County)

Sculptor: Iosif Bârsan. Painters: Dimitrie Dimitriu, Simion Silaghi junior, and Anton Simon, 1836. Credits: Ana Dumitran.

Conclusion

  • 46  Somak Oksana, Covaci Mihai, “The ‘Belz-Drohobych Workshop’ in Ukrainian Galicia and its Connection (...)

48The beginning of the Ukrainian influences in Transylvanian church art coincides with the dating of the oldest preserved icons, which date from the second half of the fifteenth century, creations of a Ruthenian painter belonging to the Belz-Drohobych workshop, discovered in the churches of Budești-Susani (Hung. Budfalva, Germ. Winzdorf) and Breb (both in Maramureș County).46

49The number of works of art that can be dated before the middle of the seventeenth century, preserved in Transylvanian Romanian churches, is too small to provide an accurate quantitative picture of the artistic influences coming from all directions. However, an analysis only of these fragments of frescoes and isolated icons shows that the greatest weight was given to Ruthenian influences, both in terms of iconography and technique. In part, this high percentage is ensured by the works of itinerant Moldavian masters or commissioned to workshops in Moldavia, where the cultural-artistic exchanges with the Orthodox environment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were very strong and constant.

50As for the actual appearance of the iconostasis in this period, the Ruthenian influence could be felt only in the painting of the panels or icons that decorated the full wall through which the sanctuary was separated from the nave, where, as a generalized peculiarity throughout the province, two symmetrical entrances were provided to ensure access between the nave and the apse.

51The oldest known iconostasis, undoubtedly made by a Ukrainian master and preserved almost intact, is dated 1646 and belongs to the templon type. It is currently in the church in Dumbrava (Bistrița-Năsăud County), but for several decades it adorned the church of a hamlet in Mureș County. Its visual impact could thus be more widespread, contributing, along with other similar works, to the modification of the appearance and structure of the iconostasis in the northern half of Transylvania. The introduction of the third entrance and the royal doors had the same origin. In the southern half of Transylvania, all these changes were the result of contacts with the cultural and artistic environment south of the Carpathians.

52An important detail specific to the Ukrainian iconostasis from the mid-seventeenth century was the introduction of depth as the third dimension of the structure of the register in which the royal icons are placed. The three openings to the sanctuary took the form of portals, in the width of which a veritable iconographic program developed. Present for the first time in the Assumption Church in Lviv, dating back to the 1620s, these features soon spread throughout the entire Ruthenian space. A decisive role in the development of this type of iconostasis was played by Peter Mohyla, the Romanian-born Metropolitan of Kyiv, thanks to whom this new iconostasis model soon reached Moldavia, where it was widely spread over the next two centuries.

53In Transylvania, the oldest attested three-dimensional iconostasis was realized on the initiative of some Ukrainian monks who took refuge in the last decades of the seventeenth century at a monastery in the forests north of the Western Carpathian Mountains, called Dumbrăvița, later known as Strâmba (Sălaj County). The echo of this initiative cannot today be quantified in comparison with the phenomenon of the spread of the three-dimensional iconostasis by the usual routes by which Ukrainian painters and icons reached Transylvania in the preceding centuries. The influences certainly intensified after the first division of Poland (1772), when Galicia became a Habsburg province like Transylvania. The new iconostasis model coexisted, often in the same church, with the old ways of separating the nave from the apse of the sanctuary mentioned above: the iconostasis wall and the templon-type iconostasis.

54Since the middle of the eighteenth century, local iconostasis commissioners and painters had at least two monumental works to draw inspiration from, to which two Ukrainian painters contributed in collaboration with sculptors from the Balkans and the southern Carpathians. The first is the iconostasis of the Greek-Catholic cathedral in Blaj (Alba County), sculpted in 1751 by Constantinos Thaliodoros from Constantinople and painted in the 1760s by Stefan Tenetskii, the most important Kyiv-trained painter working in Transylvania. The second model was the iconostasis from Certege (Alba County), painted in 1752 by Vasilie Zboroski and sculpted by Ion from Câmpulung, a possible Wallachian apprentice of Constantinos Thaliodoros.

55Iconostases inspired by these two masterpieces were commissioned in the second half of the eighteenth century for several churches in the current territory of Alba and Hunedoara Counties. Some of them were sculpted by the same Ion from Câmpulung. The painters were Transylvanian Romanians trained in Wallachia or originating from there, who benefited from a good training alongside renowned masters of the time, followers of the manner established under the name of Prince Constantine Brankovan, the most important founder of the Romanian area at the turn of the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries. However, these painters became increasingly interested in Ukrainian Baroque, and their style changed decisively. Some of them, such as Stan from Rășinari, Simon Oprovici, and Nedelcu Popovici, changed their manner under the guidance of Ukrainian or Russian itinerant masters active in Moldavia, Wallachia, Banat, or south of the Danube. Others, such as Ion from Beriu, Iacov from Rășinari, and his son, Popa Nicolae from Feisa, limited themselves to a personal exercise.

56There was also a category that was formed from the beginning under the guidance of Ukrainian painters, among the best known being Tudor (active in the area around Bistrița), Nikita (active in Sălaj and Cluj Counties), Andrei from Cornești (active in Cluj, Bistrița-Năsăud, Mureș, and Harghita Counties), Ioan Ștențel and his son Condrat (active in Cluj, Bistrița-Năsăud, and Mureș Counties), Andraș Bodor from Cluj (active in Cluj and Sălaj Counties) and, for the south-western part of Transylvania, Constantine from Râșca. Their painting has a markedly provincial aspect, appropriate to the financial possibilities of most of the Romanian communities in Transylvania.

57The most difficult to fit into one of these categories are Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu and Gheorghe, son of Iacov, from Rășinari, whose painting rises far above the creation of others, even though they often adapted to the modest means of payment of the patrons. The Baroque aspect of the iconostases painted by Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu is due in equal measure to the sculptors with whom he collaborated and to the iconography taken from Ukrainian sources. In the case of Gheorghe, son of Iacov, only the Ukrainian sources of his painting are relevant, but he assimilated them to a much lesser extent than Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu did, although the two collaborated closely on several occasions, and Gheorghe seems to have been superior to Simion in terms of native talent.

58Although it was not the only one, Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu’s Abrud workshop became the most important point of irradiation of Ukrainian Baroque influences on iconostasis art in the first half of the nineteenth century in Transylvania. The experience accumulated by Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu in several decades of activity gave a new impetus to the initiative of co-opting into the team the painter Dimitrie Dimitriu from Bucharest, one of the first apprentices of the school of painting in the Russian manner patronized by the Cernica and Căldărușani Monasteries. He and the team led by Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu’s son owe to him the last representative work bearing the imprint of Ukrainian Baroque: the iconostasis of Bucium-Izbita (Alba County), realized in 1836.

59Looking again from a quantitative point of view, the number of surviving artifacts associated with iconostases dating from the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century that have been influenced by Ukrainian art far exceeds the number of those that can be exclusively categorized in the so-called post-Brankovan movement. However, if we speak of iconostasis as a complex structure with a specific architecture, and not just isolated icons placed on a wall or on a wooden skeleton separating the nave and the sanctuary, the examples are significantly reduced. This is mainly due to the lack of funds to support works on the scale of the Baroque iconostasis. The poverty of the communities is reflected both in the small number of commissions and in the often-provincial character of the teams of Ukrainian craftsmen employed, the only ones to whom works whose appearance is entirely modern can be attributed, such as the iconostases at Porț and Brebi (Sălaj County).

60In general, however, the Ukrainian Baroque spirit of an iconostasis, regardless of its category – full wall, templon, or individual architectural structure – was ensured by painters. There were very few carvers whose contribution reached the level of sculpture, and a genuine Baroque iconostasis is characterized by the balance between the two arts: sculpture and painting. In absence of sculptors, or rather because their work exceeded the commissioners’ budget, the iconostases of the Romanian churches of Transylvania, Orthodox and Greek-Catholic alike, have for the most part retained their archaic appearance or have evolved at most to a more elaborate templon form. On these surfaces, which the carpenters were also able to model using Ukrainian sources of inspiration, the painters have painted compositions typical of Ukrainian iconography or at least superficially contaminated with it. Recognizing them depends, of course, on the art historian’s ability to juggle the multitude of sources that may have been available to the artists, but also on the quality of the painting. In many cases, because of their low artistic value, it is extremely difficult to establish a stylistic classification.

61Under these conditions, which do not seem to have differed much from one century to the next, can we speak of a contribution of Ukrainian influences to the evolution of iconostasis in Transylvania? Or only of isolated imports, due to itinerant craftsmen or important commissions, such as those received by the Greek-Catholic cathedral in Blaj and the churches of the communities involved in gold-mining in the Western Carpathians?

62As far as the iconostasis structure is concerned, it is true that most of the old wooden churches existing today have preserved their iconostasis wall, even though they were mostly built in the eighteenth century. This may be in keeping with a local tradition, or it may be due to the lack of a technical solution to ensure the integrity of the construction. The templon type iconostasis, where its introduction can be attributed to influences coming from the Ruthenian environment, i.e. in the northern half of Transylvania, did not spread widely. Only the iconography that penetrated with it and which followed the old separating structure of the altar from the nave enjoyed success. The independent iconostasis, which required even a minimal involvement of a carver, when this role was not entirely the painter’s, was not rare, but it did not become predominant. At the level of each of these structures, however, painting intervened, and it was definitely transformed by Ukrainian influences, both at the level of composition and iconography (through book illustration and other engravings) and at the technical and stylistic level (as a result of apprenticeship with Ukrainian and Russian itinerant craftsmen). Overall, each iconostas experienced at least one influence, which for a society with very few material resources was no small thing. The direction of development towards assimilating as much as possible of the Ukrainian iconostasis appearance, especially in the eighteenth century, was clear. Only the powers of realization of this desideratum were insufficient and ended the modernizing impetus.

63The last observation concerns the confessional affiliation of the painters and commissioners and the extent to which their division, since the end of the seventeenth century, into “united” (Greek-Catholics) and “non-united” (Orthodox), influenced the degree of reception of Ukrainian influences, which were essentially synonymous with the Westernization of the religious art of the Romanians in Transylvania. While information about the confession of the recipients of a work is more easily accessible, the same is not true of the painters, for whom even coming from a deeply traditionalist environment such as Wallachia was not an impediment to conversion. In 1766, for example, Grigore Ranite was said to have been a Greek-Catholic, and his conversion can be attributed to the 1764 weeping of the icon he had painted three decades earlier for the iconostasis in the chapel of the palace of the Greek-Catholic bishop of Blaj. In fact, of all the names referred to in the preceding pages, only Stefan Tenetskii and the painters of the Silaghi family from Abrud are known with certainty to have been Orthodox throughout their whole lives. Did this biographical detail have a say in the dialog with the patrons? The work of Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu proves that it did not. There is no difference in manner between the iconostasis he painted for the Orthodox church in Alba Iulia and the one for the Greek-Catholic church in Straja (Hung. Őregyháza, Germ. Hohenwarte) in Alba County. The patrons also saw no impediment in the different confessional affiliations of the painters they hired. The best example is the iconostasis of the Greek-Catholic cathedral in Blaj, painted by the Orthodox Stefan Tenetskii. If we judge strictly in terms of art history, we cannot even speak of a Transylvanian Greek-Catholic art, much less of a deliberate departure from the post-Byzantine canon. The Westernizing influences in the painting of Greek-Catholic churches are merely the consequences of imitating those in the Orthodox churches of Ukrainians, Serbs, and Romanians from Transylvania and beyond. In order to explain the long coexistence of these influences with echoes of the Brankovan style until near the end of the eighteenth century in both Orthodox and Greek-Catholic churches, we must turn our gaze once again to the precarious economic status of the Transylvanian Romanian commanditaires. Their traditionalism and their apparent attachment to the Romanian artistic synthesis generated by the prosperous reign of Prince Constantine Brankovan was, in reality, merely the consequence of their difficulties in initiating large-scale artistic projects.

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Notes

1  Cojocaru Cristina, Negrău Elisabeta, Polizu Sultana-Ruxandra, Văetiși Atanasia, Iconostase din București. Secolele XVII–XIX [Iconostases from Bucharest. Seventeenth-Nineteenth Centuries], Bucarest, Editura Cuvântul Vieții, 2017.

2  Popa Corina, Iancovescu Ioana, Bedros Vlad, Negrău Elisabeta, Repertoriul picturilor murale brâncovenești, I. Județul Vâlcea, vol. I, Text [The Repertoire of Brankovan Mural Paintings, I. Vâlcea County, vol. I, Text], Bucarest, Editura Unarte, 2008.

3  In this article, we use both the ethnonyms “Ruthenian” and “Ukrainian” to reflect historical and regional contexts. The ethnonym “Ukrainian” began to be used widely in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when the modern national movement started to develop. Prior to this time, the term “Ruthenian” was also widely used, especially in the western part of Ukraine, mostly in the context of affiliation with the tradition of Kyivan Rus’ (henceforth “Ruthenian”) and with the church of the Eastern Rite to distinguish the local population from the Polish people of the Latin Rite. Over time, especially in the nineteenth century, the term “Ukrainian” gradually replaced “Ruthenian.”

4  The significance of Peter Mohyla’s activities for the development of Ukrainian culture and the ambiguous perception of his persona and multifaceted activities is discussed, in particular, in Ševčenko Ihor, “The Many Worlds of Peter Mohyla,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. VIII, no 1/2, 1984, p. 9–44; Sysyn Frank, “Peter Mohyla and the Kiev Academy in Recent Western Works: Divergent Views on Seventeenth-Century Ukrainian Culture,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. VIII, no 1/2, 1984, p. 155–187; Plokhy Serhii, The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine, New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001; Gotsuliak Volodimir (Гоцуляк Володимир), “Петро Могила і культурно-освітній процес в Україні XVII ст.” [Petro Mohyla and the Cultural and Educational Process in Ukraine in the Seventeenth Century], Педагогічний дискурс [Pedagogical discourse], vol. 24, 2018, p. 7–11.

5  Paul of Aleppo’s Journal. Vol. 1. Syria, Constantinople, Moldavia, Wallachia and the Cossaks’ Lands. Introductory Study, Arabic Edition and English Translation by Ioana Feodorov with Yulia Petrova, Mihai Țipău and Samuel Noble, Leiden, Boston, Brill, 2024, p. 697–698.

6  For an overview of confessional developments in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, the Principality of Transylvania, and later the Habsburg Monarchy, see Brandes Dieter (ed.), History of Relation between Christian Churches in Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca, Editura Studium, 2006; Brandes Dieter, Grăjdian Vasile, Lukács Olga (eds), Kurze Geschichte der Kirchen und Religionsgemeinschaften in Siebenbürgen / Az Erdélyi egyházak és vallási közösségek rövid története / Scurt istoric al bisericilor și comunităților religioase din Transilvania [Brief History of the Churches and Religious Communities in Transylvania], Cluj-Napoca, Presa Universitară Clujeană, Leipzig, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt GmbH, 2009. Because in Transylvania there are parallel historiographies, the main events in the history of this multiethnic and multiconfessional space cannot be summarized in a few sentences. The above works present the latest analyses of Transylvania’s history.

7  For two excellent case studies, see Cojocaru Cristina, “The Painter Grigorie Popovici and His Master Jovan. Contacts between East and West during the Second Half of the 18th Century,” Museikon, no 5, 2021, p. 249-316.

8  Forgó András, Kulcsár Krisztina (eds), “Die habsburgische Variante des aufgeklärten Absolutismus.” Beiträge zur Mitregentschaft Josephs II., 1765–1780 [“The Habsburg Variant of Enlightened Absolutism.” Contributions to the Co-Regency of Joseph II, 1765–1780], Vienna, Institut für Ungarische Geschichtsforschung in Wien, Balassi Institut – Collegium Hungaricum Wien, Ungarische Archivdelegation beim Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Budapest, Ungarisches Nationalarchiv, 2018.

9  The complexity of the personal and political relationships behind these donations has been explored by Cristina Cojocaru as part of the project ERC Horizon 2020 RICONTRANS. Visual culture, piety and propaganda. Transfer and reception of Russian religious art in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean (16th to early 20th century), principal investigator Yuliana Boycheva (grant agreement No. 818791). See: https://isl.ics.forth.gr/synthesis_ricontrans/, the files introduced by Cristina Cojocaru.

10  The analysis of mass-produced Russian icons sold to Romanians in Transylvania by Russian itinerant merchants proved that some of them were painted in Transylvania by their sellers themselves; see Borovikov Ilya, “Eighteenth-Century Russian Folk Icons in Transylvanian Collections,” in Ana Dumitran, Dumitrița-Daniela Filip (eds), Russian Icons from Transylvania, Alba Iulia, Editura Muzeului Național al Unirii, Cluj-Napoca, Editura Mega, 2023, p. 27–43. No other assignable works have been identified.

11  In the whole of Transylvania, only three Russian icons of high artistic quality have been identified: one painted in the Volga region, bought in 1794 by two merchants and donated it to the church in Joseni (Hung. Gyergyóalfalu, Germ. Untersdorf) (Harghita County) and two painted somewhere in Central Russia, donated to the church in Tălmăcel (Hung. Kistalmács, Germ. Klein-Talmesch) (Sibiu County), most probably acquired in the course of transhumant shepherds’ or farmers’ journeys to Russia with their flocks. For illustrations, see Dumitran Ana, Filip Dumitrița-Daniela, “Catalogue,” in Dumitran, Filip (eds), Russian Icons from Transylvania, op. cit., p. 90–91, 124–125, 160–161.

12  Marcu Istrate Daniela, “From the Greek Bishop Hierotheos to the Latin Bishop Simon: The Churches in Alba Iulia and the Controversies Related to the Beginnings of the Diocese of Transylvania,” in Daniela Marcu Istrate, Dan Ioan Mureșan, Gabriel Tiberiu Rustoiu (eds), Christianization in Early Medieval Transylvania. The Oldest Church in Transylvania and Its Interpretation, Leiden, Boston, Brill, 2022, p. 11–56.

13  Timbuș Sergiu Petru, Iconostasul în Transilvania. Istorie, artă și teologie (cca 1400–1650) [The Iconostasis in Transylvania. History, Art and Theology (ca.1400–1650)], Cluj-Napoca, Mega, 2023. This division in the length of the separating wall between the nave and the sanctuary means that the altar remains hidden from the view of the faithful. In the version common in the other territories inhabited by the faithful of the Eastern Church, the altar is visible through the wider opening in the middle of the wall, while a second, narrower opening is on the left side.

14  Baboș Alexandru, “Icoana pe pânză Patimile lui Hristos din Sârbi Susani, Maramureș, o lucrare din secolul 17 din atelierul de zugravi din Colomeea” [The Canvas Icon of The Passion of Christ from Sârbi Susani, Maramureș, a Seventeenth-Century Work from the Painters’ Workshop in Colomeea], Acta Musei Maramorosiensis, XVI, 2020, p. 583–603 (598–599, fig. 29–30).

15  Ovsiichuk Volodimir (Овсійчук Володимир), Українське мистецтво другої пол. XVI – першої половини XVII століття [Ukrainian Art of the Second Half of the Sixteenth – First Half of the Seventeenth Century], Kyiv, Наукова думка, 1985.

16  Bokalo Igor (Бокало Ігор), Diba Iurii (Диба Юрій), Реконструкція іконостаса Успенської церкви у Львові [Reconstruction of the iconostasis of the Assumption Church in Lviv], https://www.academia.edu/31080166/ (accessed March 2025); Gembarowicz Mieczyslaw, Najstarszy ikonostas cerkwi wołoskiej we Lwowie [The Oldest Iconostasis of the Wallachian Church in Lviv], Wrocław, 2016.

17  Dorofienko I. (Дорофієнко І.), Miliaeva L., (Міляєва, Л.), Rutkovs’ka O. (Рутковська О.), Авт.-упор., Сорочинський іконостас [The Sorochynskyi Iconostasis], Kyiv, Родовід, 2010.

18  Umantsev F. (Уманцев Ф.), Троїцька надбрамна церква Києво-Печерської лаври [The gate-church of the Trinity Kyiv-Pechersk-Lavra], Kyiv, 1970; Троїцька надбрамна церква. 900. Альбом [The gate-church of the Trinity. 900 years. Album], Kyiv, Фенікс, Києво-Печерський заповідник, 2008.

19  Olianina, “Catholic Counter-Reformation Art Forms Serving the Revival of Ukrainian Orthodoxy,” op. cit., p. 253–265.

20  Another name of Strâmba Monastery.

21  The name of the Samar Monastery comes from a tributary of the Dnipro, Samar, on the banks of which, near Sich, at a place that was called Novomoskovsk in 1784 and was more recently renamed Samar (Dnipropetrovsk region), the Zaporozhian Cossacks built a wooden church, a hospital, and a school in 1576. The monastery was founded in 1602 with monks brought from the Mezhyhirya Monastery in Kyiv, also patronized by the Zaporozhian Cossack army, where it was customary for old Cossacks to retire and become monks. Dedicated to St. Nicholas and doubling as an asylum for Cossack soldiers, Samar Monastery was the largest and oldest monastery in Zaporizhzhia Sich. Situated in the middle of a centuries-old oak forest in an originally uninhabited area, it was also known as the St. Nicholas Desert Samar Monastery. Gavriil (Vassilii Fedorovich Rozanov) (Гавриил (Василий Федорович Розанов)), Историческая записка о Пустынно-Николаевском Самарском монастыре [Historical Note about the Desert Nicholas Samar Monastery], Odessa, в Городской типографии, 1838, p. 46; Feodossii (Makarevskii) (Феодосий (Макаревский)), Самарский, Екатеринославской епархии, Пустынно-Николаевский монастырь [Samar, Yekaterinoslav Bishopric, St. Nicholas Desert Monastery], Ekaterinoslav, 1873, p. 7; Iavornits’kii Dmitro (Яворницький Дмитро), Історія запорозьких козаків. У трьох томах [History of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. In Three Volumes], Том 1, Kyiv, Наукова думка, 1990, p. 293–295 (republication of the work from 1892); Harlan Oleksandr (Харлан Олександр), “Монастир святителя Христового Миколая на Самарчуку. До питання часу виникнення та місця розташування” [The Monastery of St. Nicholas of Christ in Samarchuk. On the Question of Its Date and Location], Календар памятних дат Дніпропетровської області на 2012 рік [Calendar of Memorable Dates of the Dnipropetrovsk Region for 2012], p. 163–167.

22  Godea Ioan, Cristache-Panait Ioana, Monumente istorice bisericești din Eparhia Oradiei. Județele Bihor, Sălaj și Satu-Mare. Bisericile de lemn [Heritage from the Bishopric of Oradea. Bihor, Sălaj and Satu-Mare Counties. Wooden Churches], Oradea, Editura Episcopiei Ortodoxe Române a Oradiei, 1978, p. 357.

23  Șematismul veneratului cler al Archidiecesei Metropolitane Greco-Catolice Române de Alba-Iulia și Făgăraș pre anul Domnului 1900, de la Sânta Unire 200 [Schematism of the Venerable Clergy of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Metropolitan Archdiocese of Alba Iulia and Făgăraș for the Year of Our Lord 1900, from Saint Union 200], Blaj, Tipografia Seminarului Arhidiecezan, 1900, p. 284.

24  Dumitran Ana, “Ukrainian Features in Transylvanian Icon Painting in the 18th Century,” in Ana Dumitran, Mirosław Piotr Kruk (eds), Intercultural and Visual Art Transfer in Central Europe and the Balkans. Ruthenian–Ukrainian and Romanian Art from the 15th to the Early 19th Century, Cluj-Napoca, Mega, 2023, p. 303–329 (315, fig. 31–32).

25  Terdik (ed.), The Light of Thy Countenance, op. cit., p. 179; Véghseő Tamás, Terdik Szilveszter, Hungarian Greek Catholics. A History from the Earliest Times to 1920 and the Development of Sacred Art, Nyíregyháza, 2023, p. 302; Nedici Radu, “An Artistic Melting Pot: The Building Site of the Greek Catholic Cathedral in Blaj in the Late 1740s,” in Dumitran, Kruk (eds), Intercultural and Visual Art Transfer in Central Europe and the Balkans, op. cit., p. 267–302 (284–288).

26  Nedici, “An Artistic Melting Pot,” op. cit., p. 286.

27  Cojocaru, “The Painter Grigorie Popovici and His Master Jovan,” op. cit., p. 249–316.

28  The files introduced by Cristina Cojocaru in RICONTRANS Project’s database, https://isl.ics.forth.gr/synthesis_ricontrans/.

29  Dumitran, “Ukrainian Features in Transylvanian Icon Painting,” op. cit., p. 314–315.

30  Nedici, “An Artistic Melting Pot,” op. cit., p. 284–288.

31  Dumitran Ana, “Pictura românească în județul Alba până la mijlocul secolului al XIX-lea. Demersuri pentru o bază de date” [Romanian Painting in Alba County until the Mid-nineteenth Century. Steps towards a Database] Patrimonium Apulense, XII, 2012, p. 7–387 (90–91).

32  Nedici, “An Artistic Melting Pot,” op. cit., p. 283, 287.

33  Dumitran, Hegedűs, Rus, Fecioarele înlăcrimate ale Transilvaniei, op. cit., p. 129.

34  Micu Samuil, Istoria românilor [History of the Romanians], Ediţie princeps după manuscris de Ioan Chindriş, vol. II, Bucarest, 1995, p. 346.

35  Ibid., p. 348.

36  Medeleanu Horia, “Pictorul Ştefan Teneţchi. Viaţa şi opera” [The Painter Stefan Tenetskii. Life and Work], Ziridava, XV–XVI, 1987, p. 357–378 (371).

37  Porumb Marius, Un veac de pictură românească din Transilvania. Secolul XVIII [A Century of Romanian Painting from Transylvania. The Eighteenth Century], Bucarest, Meridiane, 2003, p. 56.

38  Bunea Augustin, Episcopii Petru Paul Aron și Dionisiu Novacovici sau istoria românilor transilvăneni de la 1751 până la 1764 [Bishops Petru Paul Aron and Dionisiu Novacovici or the History of Transylvanian Romanians from 1751 to 1764], Blaj, Tipografia Seminarului Arhidiecezan, 1902, p. 283.

39  Terdik Szilveszter, “Marian Symbols on the Iconostasis of the Cathedral of Blaj,” Apulum, LII, series Historia et Patrimonium, 2015, p. 83–103 (84).

40  Medeleanu, “Pictorul Ştefan Teneţchi,” op. cit., p. 366–368.

41  Abrudan, “The Pious Paraskevi Church in Rășinari,” op. cit., p. 32–33.

42  Ibid., p. 43.

43  Zintz Maria, Pictura murală a bisericilor românești din Țara Făgărașului în secolul al XVIII-lea și în prima jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea [Mural Painting of Romanian Churches in Fagaras and Around in the Eihjteenth Century and the First Half of the Nineteenth Century], Bucarest, Editura Academiei Române, 2011.

44  Dumitran Daniel, forthcoming, “Returning to the Subject of the History of an Absence: The Greek Community of Alba Iulia – History and Artistic Heritage,” Series Byzantina, no 23, 2025.

45 Abrudan Ioan Ovidiu, “Dimitrie Dimitriu, the Painter from Wallachia,” Brukenthal. Acta Musei, VI, no 2, 2011, p. 333–352 (338).

46  Somak Oksana, Covaci Mihai, “The ‘Belz-Drohobych Workshop’ in Ukrainian Galicia and its Connection with Romanian Maramureș,” Museikon, no 6, 2022, p. 81–98.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Fig. 1. The iconostasis from Dumbrava (Bistrița-Năsăud County)
Crédits Ruthenian painter, 1646. Credits: Sergiu Petru Timbuș.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/docannexe/image/6719/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 758k
Titre Fig. 2. Inside of the Strâmba Monastery church
Crédits The left door frame of the royal gates, painted in 1700 and repainted in 1742 by the older Melkhisedek. Credits: Ana Dumitran.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/docannexe/image/6719/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 866k
Titre Fig. 3. The iconostasis from Cormaia (Bistrița-Năsăud County)
Crédits Unknown painter, 1751, with royal icons painted by Tudor in the first decades of the eighteenth century. Credits: Daniel Constantinescu.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/docannexe/image/6719/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 527k
Titre Fig. 4. The iconostasis from Certege (Alba County), at its last location, in the Orthodox church of the Mănăștur quarter in Cluj-Napoca
Crédits Vasilie Zboroski, painter, and Ion from Câmpulung, sculptor, 1752. Credits: Ana Dumitran.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/docannexe/image/6719/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 562k
Titre Fig. 5. The iconostasis from Greek Catholic Cathedral in Blaj (Alba County)
Crédits Constantinos Thaliodoros, sculptor, 1750–1751; painters: Stefan Tenetskii (before September 1765), Grigore Ranite (the prophets’ row, 1764), and an unknown painter (the cross). Credits: Radu Nedici.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/docannexe/image/6719/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 778k
Titre Fig. 6. The iconostasis from Saint Paraskeva Church in Rășinari (Sibiu County)
Crédits Sculptor: Ion from Câmpulung, c.1757–1760. Painters: Grigore Ranite, 1760–1763 (now only two of the royal icons); Gheorghe, son of Iacov, and Ioan Grigorovici, 1784–1785; unknown painter, 1795 (the cross). Credits: Ana Dumitran.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/docannexe/image/6719/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 588k
Titre Fig. 7. The iconostasis from Avrig (Sibiu County)
Crédits Unknown sculptor; painters: Teodor and his son, Sava, 1807. Credits: Ana Dumitran.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/docannexe/image/6719/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 641k
Titre Fig. 8. The iconostasis from Brebi (Sălaj County)
Crédits Ukrainian workshop, 1780, repainted in the twentieth century. Credits: Bogdan Ilieș.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/docannexe/image/6719/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 886k
Titre Fig. 9. The iconostasis from Porț (Sălaj County)
Crédits Ukrainian workshop, end of the eighteenth century. Credits: Bogdan Ilieș.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/docannexe/image/6719/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 741k
Titre Fig. 10. The iconostasis from Goiești (Alba County)
Crédits Simion Silaghi-Sălăgeanu, 1790. Credits: Mircea Rareș Țetcu.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/docannexe/image/6719/img-10.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,1M
Titre Fig. 11. The iconostasis from Bucium-Izbita (Alba County)
Crédits Sculptor: Iosif Bârsan. Painters: Dimitrie Dimitriu, Simion Silaghi junior, and Anton Simon, 1836. Credits: Ana Dumitran.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/docannexe/image/6719/img-11.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 599k
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Référence électronique

Ana Dumitran, Roksolana Kosiv, Bogdan Ilieș et Andrei Buda, « Ukrainian Influences in the Evolution of the Iconostasis in the Romanian Churches of Transylvania (17th–19th Century) »Balkanologie [En ligne], Vol. 20 n° 1 | 2025, mis en ligne le 01 octobre 2025, consulté le 23 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/6719 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15aah

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Auteurs

Ana Dumitran

National Museum of the Great Union, Alba Iulia, Romania
anadumitran2013[at]gmail.com

Roksolana Kosiv

Lviv National Academy of Arts, Lviv, Ukraine
lanakosiv[at]yahoo.com

Bogdan Ilieș

“Arhaic” Association. Ambulance for Monuments, Sălaj branch, Zalău, Romania
bogdan_ilies[at]yahoo.com

Andrei Buda

“Lucian Blaha” University, Sibiu, Romania
andreionut.buda[at]gmail.com

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