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Literary sources of iconography programs of medieval Moldavian mural painting


Author: Constantin Ciobanu
Degree:doctor habilitat of philology
Speciality: 10.01.01 - Romanian Literature
Year:2005
Institution: Institute of History of Art of the ASM

Status

The thesis was presented on the 18 November, 2005
Approved by NCAA on the 22 December, 2005

Abstract

Adobe PDF document0.44 Mb / in romanian

Keywords

Amnos, The Tree of Jesse, Fine arts, The Siege of Constantinople, Workshop of painters, Church, Byzance, Calligrapher, Short hymn, Chronograph, Middle Ages, Grafitto, Fresco, Iconography, The Akhatist Hymn, Inscription, Chro-nicle, Wise men of Antiquity, Slavonic language, Oracle’s literature, Manuscript, Monastery, Moldavia, Petru Rareş, Exterior frescoes, Prophecies of the Seven Sages, Iconographic programme, Prologue, Pseudo-inscription, Cyrillic writing, Historical source, Literary source

Summary

The thesis for the degree of doctor habilitat “Literary sources of iconography programs of medieval Moldavian mural painting” touches upon the issue of medieval mural painting interpretation from a “written text – painted image” perspective. Although this key principle of any iconography related research is well-known, no thorough enough textological analysis of Byzantine and Slavic literary sources, however, has been carried out yet in the programs of Moldavian mural painting of the 15th-16th century.

The objective of the thesis is locating the sources of the most disputable (and rich in interpretation!) themes of medieval Moldavian mural painting. Those are as follows: “The Siege of Constantinople” in the cycle “Acathist Hymn” and “Sayings” of Ancient sages in the work “The Tree of Iesey” or on buttress decoration.

The scientific novelty of the obtained results is introduction to scientific circulation of particular historical, literary and art sources which have been left outside the sphere of Romanian art historians’ interests so far. The following works proved to be such sources: Byzantine homily of the 19th cent. “Hymnus Acathistus. De obsidione Constantinopolis”, a “Troitsk” edition of the story of Nestor Iskander dedicated to the Ottomans’ conquest of Tsargrad; some illustrations from “Illustrated Imperial Corpus” (by 2 volume Ostermann and volume Shumilov), most of Greek and Slavic manuscripts that contain collections of Ancient sages’ prophesies. This spread of the base of the sources does not exhaust, however, the novelty of the research. The attempts to reveal the existence of literary or art sources that are now vanished but can be (partially!) reconstructed are new as well. The following, according to the undersigned, are such sources: the image of a fortress’ siege that became the prototype for the illustration “The siege of Smolensk” from “Illustrated Imperial Corpus“ (by 2 volume Ostermann) and a Slavic common protograph of the sayings of Ancient sages, - the protograph, - that are reconstructed on the basis of texts from philosophers’ phylacteries on Moldavian wall-painting and similar citations from the manuscript from Kirillo-Belozersk monastery, calligraphically written by a former hegumen of monastery Guri Tushin.

A crucial significance in elaboration of the present thesis is given to researches carried out in monasteries and churches of Suceava district, Iaşi (Cetaţuia monastery), Bucureşti (church “with saints”) and Moscow (the cathedrals of the Assumption and of the Annunciation in the Kremlin, Smolensk cathedral of Novodevichiy monastery etc.). As the result of these researches, a series of “sayings” of Ancient sages was read for the first time, which had previously been either completely unknown or misinterpreted or misattributed. Thus, it has been found out that a prophecy from the phylactery of Plutarch from the exterior painting of St.Gheorghe church (Suceava) represents a fragment of the renowned testimony referring to Jesus from “Judaic antiquities” by Josephus Flavius. A Slavic inscription has been also identified and read at that very church, on the phylactery of “Hellene Zmovagl”. The author ventured to put forward several hypotheses on identification of particular “exotic” names of Ancient sages from Moldavian and Bulgarian medieval mural painting. In most cases, the ascertainments suggested by the undersigned disprove the ideas previously stated by a specialist of Slavic philology Grigore Nandriş.

The originality of this research also refers to the interpretation of the character of medieval literary testimonies. Some of these testimonies proved to be of pronounced prophetic character. Thus, the ending of „Troitsk’” edition of the story “Taking over Tsargrad” attributed to mysterious Nestor Iskander includes the “prophecy” of Pseudo-Daniel (concerning the liberator of Constantinople). This very story, along with the homily’s text “Hymnus Acathistus. De obsidione Constantinopolis”, included in Triod, represented the basis for creation of the iconography of the image “Siege of Constantinople” of the Moldovan exterior painting. As for prophetic element, present in the “sayings” of Ancient writers and philosophers, it has a millennial history and descends from the literary sources of the late Antiquity and of the early Byzantine Empire. These statements, made as a result of detailed studies of medieval sources, allowed to explain the reasons for introducing the image “Siege of Constantinopol” and the sayings of Ancient sages into iconography programs of Petru Rareş founders.

In the view of the recent revealing of the initial painting from the altar of St. Nicholas church of Probota monastery, one of the thesis enclosures is dedicated to the elucidation of sources of the exceptionally rare image of Jesus Christ with cut off hands, held by St. John Chrysostomos. Another enclosure touches upon the issue of interpretation analogies, existing between the pseudo-inscriptions of Moldavian medieval painting and the literary style of word ligatures, which became popular after the reform of Slavic writing initiated by patriarch Eftimie of Tyrnova and his disciples (Konstantin Kostenetski and others).