Icons

The icons constitute a small group of items within the rich collection of the Putna Monastery. Certainly, most of them have been lost over time, many icons having been damaged, alienated, or replaced by versions reflecting the taste of their time. The old icons preserved in the monastery—some repainted, and others only recently recovered after long wanderings throughout the country—raise dating and attribution issues that require in-depth study.

Recent research has established that one of the oldest icons preserved in the monastery’s collection, unaffected by repainting, is the Ascension of the Lord. It had already been assumed that the icon might be older than the beautiful silver gilt mounting that covers its frame and the upper part of the central field, donated by Bishop Anastasie of Roman in 1568.

The Ascension of the Lord, icon, 15th century. — The *Ascension of the Lord*, 15th century, is one of the oldest icons kept in the Putna Monastery treasury.

The painting displays exceptional qualities: perfectly balanced composition, elongated silhouettes with a graceful dynamism of form, and treatment of pictorial material with different degrees of transparency and opacity, specific to a workshop where Byzantine tradition was kept alive. The representational canon, with small heads and elongated bodies, the physiognomic typology, and the luminous chromatic palette dominated by golden ochre argue in favor of attributing this painting to a Russian workshop, probably from Moscow.

Relatively recently, Putna Monastery recovered eight icons of Apostles that once belonged to an iconostasis register, the Great Deisis. The icons, which had once been kept at the Metropolis of Moldavia and Suceava, were taken into custody by the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest during the communist regime, the note of provenance mentioning: “from the iconostasis of the Putna Monastery.”.

The icons of Holy Apostles John, Peter, Paul, Andrew, and Simon.

The only references to these icons in the scholarly literature proposed dating them to the first half of the 17th century and attributing them to Russian painters. Restored at the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest, the icons of the Apostles Mark, John, Peter, Paul, Matthew (?), Andrew, Simon, and Philip reveal their remarkable qualities, which led Engelina Smirnova to attribute them to a classicizing current within 15th-century Moscow art, with a preferred dating in the last third of that century.

Engelina Smirnova at the Putna Monastery Museum. — Engelina Smirnova at the Putna Monastery Museum in September 2009, during the 8th edition of the Putna Colloquia.

The synchronization of the dating of the Ascension of the Lord icon and of the Apostles’ icons suggests that these icons may have belonged to the same iconostasis, a hypothesis which, in our opinion, is also supported by certain stylistic similarities. Under these circumstances, we might be dealing with the remaining pieces of a Putna Monastery iconostasis from the time of Stephen the Great, painted by Russian masters, either the iconostasis of the first church, consecrated in 1469, or that of the second church, built after the 1484 fire.

The power of Tradition and the respect for Tradition are moral dimensions that are particularly important for understanding the persistence of certain myths concerning two emblematic icons of Putna Monastery: the so-called “Stephen the Great’s” triptych and the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God with the Child, brought from Constantinople, according to tradition, by the same voivode.

The Deisis triptych, omposed of the icons of Jesus Christ, the Mother of God, and Saint John the Baptist—the latter two depicted as intercessors—is a work whose dating and attribution, setting aside tradition, require serious critical analysis using the tools of the art historian. More or less influenced by legend, many art historians who have referred to the triptych have attributed it to the 15th century and to Byzantine art. The only well-founded opinion is that of Ion D. Ștefănescu, who relates the triptych to “the tradition and spirit of the Stroganov school” (the second half of the 16th century–the first half of the 17th century).

The icons of Holy Apostles John, Peter, Paul, Andrew, and Simon are among the eight icons believed to have been painted during the reign of Stephen the Great.

Recently, on the back of one of the icons, the signature of Ewerer Ilie Herescu (before 1781), brother of Bishop Dositheus of Rădăuți, was discovered. It also seems plausible that Bartholomew Mazereanu's 1771 mention of three icons (“Christ, the Most Holy Mother, John the Baptist”) in the register of the Solca Monastery may refer to this Putna triptych, according to certain similarities emerging from Archimandrite Mazereanu’s description. Regardless of its provenance, the Russian triptych remains a work of remarkable artistic value within the treasury of the Putna Monastery.

Deisis triptych icon from the Putna Monastery treasury.

A similar context surrounds the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God with the Child. When the mounting commissioned by Holy Metropolitan Jacob of Putna in 1755—covering almost the entire surface, except for the faces—is removed, the Hodighitria type icon of the Mother of God with the Child reveals itself as an exceptionally beautiful painting, not from the 15th century, but rather from the 17th century. Later interventions affected the faces of the angels, nothing more.

The wonderworking icon of the <em>Mother of God with the Child</em> from the Putna Monastery, without the mounting. — The wonderworking icon of the *Mother of God with the Child* from the Putna Monastery, without the mounting commissioned by Holy Metropolitan Jacob of Putna.

St. Jacob of Putna found the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God with the Child in 1755 exactly as it looks today, as proved by the fact that the mounting reproduces in the smallest detail the actual painting. How, then, can we explain the traditional supposition that the icon dates back to the 15th century? There may be one explanation, supported by laboratory analyses conducted in 2004. The crossbars on the back of the icon are arranged vertically, which is quite unusual and can only be explained by the shortening of the panel of an older icon and its horizontal reuse. Even if this supposition were correct, this technical detail hasn’t been powerful enough to dislodge the traditional dating from the historical narrative of the monastic community.

In 1757, Archimandrite Bartholomew Mazereanu was delegated to Kyiv by Jacob of Putna to bring several “alms,” among which were “86 icons for all the great and small feasts throughout the year.”

The <em>Meeting of the Lord</em> icon. — The *Meeting of the Lord* icon is part of the set of 86 icons brought from Kyiv by Archimandrite Bartholomew Mazereanu in 1757.

The icons, preserved today in the monastery's special storage, are characteristic products of the taste of ecclesiastical patrons in 18th-century Moldavia: without standing out through extraordinary artistic qualities, the authors of the festal icons—probably Ukrainian—adapted Baroque-influenced stylistic elements to compositions constructed by generally respecting traditional Orthodox iconography.