The Putna Monastery museum keeps one of the most important collections of Byzantine embroidery in the world. The old manuscripts, the textiles woven in gold, silver and silk threads, and the objects crafted from precious metals offer a vivid image of what the power of creation rooted in life in Christ has meant throughout the ages.
The information available at present does not tell us the exact year when the first museum collection was organized at the Putna Monastery. At first, the treasures were kept in the church and in the Treasure Tower.
Chronologically, the first signs of a collection appeared around the year 1900. Between November 22 and December 23 in that year, a committee checked on the existence and conditions for the preservation of the artefacts.
The first building especially designed as a museum was built around 1911. The theme of the first museum covered both the epoch of Stephen the Great and the following periods, with embroideries, brocades, silverware, manuscripts, mounted icons, documents, crucifixes, crosiers.
The collection was reorganized in 1922 after the Great Union. In this period, Putna participated in a medieval art exhibition held in Bucharest, at the end of which the monastery was given – together with the displayed items – the 6 desks and 9 showcases used to display the treasures. On the 28th of April 1922, Vicar Bishop Hippolytus Vorobchievici and priest Demetrius Dan invited Hegumen Gregory Volcinschi to store the furniture “in a proper room” together with the artefacts.
A decisive moment in the history of the Putna Monastery museum is represented by years 1933–1934 when, with the efforts of Hegumen Athanasius Prelipceanu and with financial support from King Charles II, the museum was restored and refurbished “on the model of the great museums abroad.” Electricity was introduced and two more rooms were added to the already existing two.
A monastery guide presents to the visitors Lady Maria of Mangup’s tomb cover.
Starting from 1940, the monastery began to evacuate its treasures to Râmnicu Vâlcea. We don’t know when the artefacts returned from Râmnicu Vâlcea. What we know is that, in 1952, the Putna Monastery museum was again functional with six main halls and a number of 253 exhibits.
At the celebration of 500 years since Stephen the Great’s enthronement, the collection was reorganized under the coordination of art historian Teodora Voinescu. Restoration works to the museum weren’t properly done, the paintjob was rushed, wet wood was used, and some wooden showcases were placed directly against the newly painted walls. On February 20, 1962, Putna Monastery notified the Metropolis of Moldavia about the appearance of some fungi in the monastery museum; the laboratory of phytopathology in Bucharest identified it on the 26th of April as Merulius lacrimans.
On June 1, 1962, the museum was closed down and entirely evacuated. On the September 29, 1962, the Metropolitan approved – upon request from the monastery – “the preparation of the two chambers in the Treasure Tower for the provisional storage of the patrimony objects until the proper renovation of the museum’s building.” The museum remained closed all throughout the year 1963.
The part of the permanent exhibition which is dedicated to Holy Metropolitan Jacob of Putna, the second great founder of the Putna Monastery.
On the 5th of May 1964, as renovation of the affected building had not even started, the monastery called on the Metropolitan to “allow that part of the exhibits be provisionally stored in the room at the first floor of the entrance Tower (the Eminescu Tower).
In the same year, some time between June 1 and August 4, the museum was reopened in a new form, with new furniture and six exhibition halls.
Over the years, items from the monastery patrimony were lent for different exhibitions in Romania and abroad.
On April 21, 1970, the Department for Religious Affairs and the State Committee for Culture and Arts borrowed from Putna the censer given by Stephen the Great to the Monastery on April 12, 1470, to display it at an exhibition in Paris entitled “Old Treasures from Romania” (May, 1970). On the April 8, 1971, after the exhibition had been reiterated in Stockholm, Göteborg and London, the censer returned to Romania. Although the beneficiary pledged to “take all the measures needed for the safekeeping, security and return of this priceless religious object [author’s highlight],” on November 12, 1971, the State Committee for Culture and Arts notified Putna Monastery that “the exhibition in its entirety had been entrusted to the National History Museum of Romania […]” and the censer with the Moldavian coat of arms had been entrusted to a section of this museum entitled “Tezaur (Treasure).” Instead of the original artefact, the History Museum made a replica and sent it to Putna Monastery somewhere around October 2, 1975.
The other lent items from Putna’s treasury had the same fate.
Participants to a guiding tour in front of the monastery museum.
Between 1975 and 1976, a new building was added to the museum premises. The building, which became operational on June 6, 1976, had been designed to meet all the standards regarding the preservation and safekeeping of religious patrimony. The number of exhibits rose again, the collection being enriched with valuable ceramics (13th–16th centuries) discovered on the archeological sites of Putna in the sixth through the ninth decades of the past century.
The latest reorganization of the Putna Monastery museum collection took place between 2003 and 2004, on the celebration of 500 years since Stephen the Great’s death. A very valuable embroidery known as Lady Maria Asanina Palaiologina’s Tomb Cover was restored at that time by a team of experts from Romania’s National Art Museum (M.N.A.R.) in Bucharest, headed by Mihai Lupu and Ileana Crețu. They restored other museum items, as well, among whom three epitrachelions.
Another major event also occurred in 2004: the recovery of the objects lost in the period 1970–1971. Some of them were added to the museum collection, which thus gained more specificity. Eight icons representing the Holy Apostles, painted in Russia in the late 15th century, were also returned to the monastery in 2004.
The building hosting the present-day Putna Monastery museum collection was built in 1975-1976.
