Furthermore, one of the most significant aspects is that a few artistic values have been gradually assumed by the most valuable iconographers:ġ. One may observe that, over the past five to ten years, the phenomenon has become more alive and has configured a group of iconographers and church painters who are not only talented artists but also curators, theorists and project managers. Their personalities are complex: in addition to working in the studio or on the scaffold, they organize symposia, open exhibitions and workshops, invite colleagues from the country and abroad, some of them teach religious art and, generally, they bring iconography to the public attention. Socially, they are also the most visible category, knowing how to promote their creation, how to set up events and integrate their art in the larger cultural and artistic phenomenon. Our interest focuses on these latter artists who have reached an advanced aptitude of mastering the painting of icons and frescos. Some of them have found their own style and thus have become able to push further iconography as an artistic domain, at least in this Orthodox country.Įlena Murariu working on an icon of the burning bush. On the other hand, there are those artists who strive to define their own style and language in what regards either the manner of drawing, or of choosing the chromatic palette, or of re-imagining the internal composition of icons and iconographic programs. On the one hand, there are painters who reproduce classical compositional and chromatic styles from Manuel Panselinos – the most frequented and most imitated – to Macedonian iconography, to the masterpieces of Mont Athos, to the local Romanian styles (either of the Moldavian monasteries or of the Brancovan (Brâncoveanu) art developed in Walachia in the eighteenth century). As with any profession, the new iconographers and church painters demonstrate an uneven value it is not enough to learn the technique and follow the Byzantine herminia (the painter’s manual) to become a skilled and appreciated iconographer. The most remarkable aspect of this revival is that the abundant iconographic demand and the high number of skilled iconographers gave rise to a competitive ambiance that led to an obvious advance in the quality of iconography and, subsequently, to a new iconographic movement. Ioan Popa working on his icon of the Brancovan martyrs (shown below) In this context, the icon has become a common presence in homes and offices. There are new parish churches, new monasteries, new canonized saints as well as new Christian martyrs of the communist persecution receiving a large popular veneration and waiting to be canonized. In the aftermath of the atheist regime, religious life has revived in all its dimensions: art, liturgy, parish life and monastic communities. Four of the twelve Orthodox faculties of theology in the country have created departments of sacred art, preparing iconographers and specialists in the preservation of medieval iconography and many of their graduates have become proficient in painting icons and frescos. Today it is a common gesture to order an icon for your house or to offer an icon as a present. However, in the last 25 years that have elapsed since the anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe, changes have been impressive. ![]() Institutionally, the Romanian Patriarchate had a commission specialised on religious art mostly dealing with the preservation of the national heritage. In those days, the interest in icons was a mere private occupation, or of niche. It would have been impossible as well to imagine iconography taught in a public school and the technique of painting icons at the department of Fine Arts. ![]() It would have been impossible to imagine a public conversation on icons and their veneration a quarter of a century ago in communist Romania. Iconography, a recovered artistic language Toma Chituc and Mihai Coman, two iconographers of the Romanian icon renewal.
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