Art History

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    'From the Orthodox Megalopolis of Moscovy of Great Russia': Russian heirlooms from the monastery of Tatarna, Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries
    (Ιερά Μητρόπολις Σταγών και Μετεώρων, Ακαδημία Θεολογικών και Ιστορικών Μελετών Αγίων Μετεώρων, 2022) Boycheva, Yuliana ; Resh, Daria
    This article examines Russian artifacts donated to the Monastery of the Virgin of Tatarna (Evrytania, Central Greece) by Archbishop Arsenios of Elassona (1550-1625) and clergymen from his entourage. A monastic site since the Byzantine period, Tatarna emerged as an important religious center in the late sixteenth century because of its special status as a patriarchal monastery (stavropegion), granted to it almost immediately after its foundation by monks from Thessaly. The donation of a large number of Russian artifacts includes a manuscript, icons, and a pectoral panagiarion-encolpion, some of which are associated directly with Arsenios through inscriptions, while others are attributable to the clerics carrying the artifacts to the monastery. Overall, this is one of the very interesting ensembles of Russian ecclesiastical art to have survived in its original context in Greece. It is distinguished not only by the excellent craftsmanship of the objects comprising it, but also by the questions it raises as a historical source.
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    Icon Goldsmiths, Pious Widows, and Holy Maidens
    (Muzeul Naţional al Unirii Alba Iulia, 2022) Kostopoulos, Tasos
    L’article explore un aspect peu étudié de la réception de l’art religieux russe par les communautés orthodoxes balkaniques du xixe siècle : l’image de la Russie et de ses peuples, que les moines collectant les aumônes (zeteia) avaient relayée, à leur retour, dans leurs monastères d’origine et/ou aux communautés environnantes. L’objectif principal des voyages entrepris par ces moines était de convertir une partie considérable de dons et bénéfices collectés en une variété d’objets ecclésiastiques précieux et/ou revêtements d’icônes. La présente étude analyse trois récits différents de deux de ces voyages, effectués dans les années 1860 et au début des années 1890 par des moines athonites. Elle explore également deux approches dans cette collecte d’aumônes (traditionnelle vs entrepreneuriale) et la manière dont le regard porté par les voyageurs en question sur la société russe, ses institutions religieuses, ses mœurs et ses habitudes, a pu en être affecté.
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    Icons as Marketable Objects
    (Muzeul Naţional al Unirii Alba Iulia, 2020-04-04) Seraïdari, Katerina
    L’étude examine les raisons pour lesquelles les icônes russes, ou imitant un style russe, sont devenues des objets à la mode, commercialisés en Grèce du milieu du XIXe au début du XXe siècle. Elle met ainsi en lumière un phénomène social : la diffusion et la popularité des icônes russes dans ce pays, mais aussi au Mont Athos – une région considérée comme étant le ‘gardien’ de la tradition orthodoxe et de l’authenticité qui faisait encore partie de l’Empire O1oman pendant l’époque en question. Les conséquences de ce1e circulation sont également analysées. Ce phénomène culturel a mené à une banalisation du commerce des icônes et à une confusion croissante entre le domaine de la spiritualité et celui des transactions économiques. La production d’icônes émerge donc comme une arène d’intérêts concurrents; ce qui révèle l’asymétrie de l’influence que la Grèce (un état récemment fondé et économiquement instable) et l’Empire russe exerçaient dans le monde orthodoxe.
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    Itinerant Suspicions: Russian Icon Traders in the Macedonian Hinterland Through the Eyes of Greek Consuls and Agents
    (Departamentul de Istorie, Arheologie și Muzeologie, Universitatea „1 Decembrie 1918” din Alba Iulia, 2021-12-15) Kostopoulos, Tasos
    Itinerant Russian icon traders, colloquially known as afenya, one of the main channels through which various objects of Russian religious art found their way to the Ottoman-dominated Balkans, were seen by Greek nationalists during the late 19th century as the spearhead of a Panslavist thrust designed to hit Hellenism’s soft religious underbelly. Two sets of documents from Greek diplomats and their agents in the Macedonian hinterland, dealing with two emblematic incidents involving such Russian traders, shed light on this trade, its features and its reception by local communities at the era of Balkan national revivals
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    La carrière patrimoniale d’une mosaïque portative byzantine
    (Actes Sud, 2022) Seraïdari, Katerina
    This article tells two parallel stories: one about a 14th century Athonite icon that was in the collection of a Russian diplomat in 1894 before it was acquired by the Dumbarton Oaks Museum, and the other is the emergence of a new object of study in the field of Byzantine Art starting at the end of the 19th century, precisely when these pieces (that were being studied systematically for the first time) were increasingly sought after by collectors. Thus, this article examines how a type of object (small portable mosaics) was identified and named at the end of the 19th century. Efforts to define this type of object were signified by the production of lists of byzantine miniatures that had survived the passage of time. Inventories revealed the great rarity of these pieces that were already highly desirable amongst Italian collectors during the Renaissance. This article follows the trajectory of one such mosaic, which after having been kept in place in the treasury of the Vatopedi Monastery, was moved around a number of times. Its change of status (from object of devotion to a museum work), the conditions of its displacements and the different forms of exchange in which it was involved (gifts but also sales) reveal a correlation with the development of archeological studies on such portable mosaics. The articulation between these two stories shows that the process of organizing knowledge on certain topics can directly affect the art and antiquities market.
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    Museographic Objects, Saints, and Sacred Places
    (Muzeul Naţional al Unirii Alba Iulia, 2022) Seraïdari, Katerina
    L’article nous présente la manière dont trois histoires, avec des finalités très différentes, s’avèrent en réalité interconnectées. La première histoire est celle de saint Antoine Petchersky (xe-xie siècle), père du monachisme russe et fondateur de la Laure des Grottes de Kyïv; la deuxième concerne un monastère du Mont Athos, où ce saint aurait vécu pendant un certain temps au xie siècle; la troisième nous parle d’un objet qu’il aurait porté. La présente étude permet d’explorer la rivalité entre Grecs et Russes au Mont Athos dans la seconde moitié du xixe siècle. Elle permet également d’interroger la question des ‘faux’ objets et la pertinence culturelle de ces derniers.
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    Pious Russian Soldiers, Devout Cretan Donors and the Church
    (Muzeul Naţional al Unirii Alba Iulia, 2022) Katopi, Sofia
    Cet article se propose d’étudier, dans leur contexte, différents accessoires ecclésiastiques russes, tels que des épitaphes, des vêtements de prêtres et des objets eucharistiques, qui se trouvent dans les églises et dans les monastères de la préfecture de Réthymnon - district passé sous le contrôle russe entre 1897 et 1909 - et qui datent de l’époque de l’Autonomie Crétoise (1898-1913). A la lumière des relations entre la Russie et les institutions socio-politiques crétoises; en tenant compte du fait que la Russie n’entretenait pas, avec cette île, des liens commerciaux aussi développés qu’avec les autres secteurs de la Grèce, l’auteure s’intéresse aux mécanismes de transfert et d’acquisition d’objets liturgiques russes, ainsi qu’à la reconstitution d’une cartographie. Aussi, les découvertes sont-elles étudiées dans le contexte des stratégies politiques - clés du soi-disant « soft power » déployé par la Russie impériale pour asseoir son pouvoir dans la région - employées afin de préserver et soutenir l’orthodoxie contre la propagande catholique et protestante.
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    Products of Russian Visual Culture in the Treasury of Rakovica Monastery in Belgrade (17th-20th Centuries)
    (Muzeul Naţional al Unirii Alba Iulia, 2022) Ženarju Rajović, Ivana
    L’article présente une série d’icônes et d’objets liturgiques provenant du trésor du monastère Rakovica à Belgrade, en Serbie. Plusieurs exemples, datant de différentes périodes, témoignent de l’influence culturelle russe sur le milieu local serbe. Le monastère possède six icônes peintes dans le Palais des Armures du Kremlin à Moscou vers la fin du xviie siècle. Ces icônes, qui comptent parmi les témoins conservés les plus anciens, nous renseignent sur les relations serbo-russes au sein de la vie religieuse de Belgrade. D’innombrables guerres ont jalonné l’existence du monastère Rakovica, ce qui explique que le trésor soit aujourd’hui relativement modeste. Il comprend, par exemple, quelques icônes russes des xixe et xxe siècles, principalement des artefacts produits en série, sans valeur artistique significative. Toutefois, les revêtements en argent de trois de ces icônes nécessitent une analyse approfondie. Aussi, le trésor comprend-il plusieurs livres liturgiques imprimés à Moscou ou dans la Laure des Grottes de Kyïv, de même que deux objets liturgiques.
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    Religious Text Transfer in the Context of Orthodox Intercultural Exchange
    (University of Balamand, 2021) Borisova, Tatiana
    This paper focuses on the phenomenon of text transfer that followed the transfer of a cult between two different Orthodox cultures and three language traditions. The case of Saint John the Russian and the transfer of his cult from Cappadocia to Greece, and later to Russia, are examined. Special attention is paid to the hagiographic texts composed or translated during each stage of this transfer: from the initial oral tradition, based on which the first text was published in Karamanli Turkish in 1849, up to the texts written in Greek in mid-late 19th century and Russian texts from the late 19th century. The comparison of these text traditions shows the peculiarities in the perception of the same saint in different Orthodox cultures, while the factors that lead to this divergence are also revealed. The process of the gradual formation of the hagiographic text tradition dedicated to St. John the Russian in this trilingual space is analysed.
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    Revealing the History of the Objects. A Synergy between Restorers and Chemists (RICONTRANS Project Research)
    (Muzeul Naţional al Unirii Alba Iulia, 2021) Dumitran, Ana
    The ‘life’ of an object (the date of creation and its ‘adventure’ throughout time) can be revealed through a masterly interplay of historical, conservation, and scientific investigation. This is why a fruitful collaboration between chemists and restorers within the RICONTRANS Project(Visual Culture, Piety and Propaganda: Transfer and Reception of Russian Religious Art in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean (16th-early 20th c.) has been initiated, in order to gain new insights into the phenomenon of the transfer and reception of Russian iconography in Transylvania.
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    Russian Icon Marketing in Transylvania as a Means of Political and Social Destabilization
    (Departamentul de Istorie, Arheologie și Muzeologie, Universitatea „1 Decembrie 1918” din Alba Iulia, 2021-12-15) Dumitran, Ana ; Dane, Veronka ; Rus, Vasile ; Wollmann, Volker
    The sale of mass production Russian icons in Transylvania is known only through the events at the time and after Horea’s Uprising of 1784-1785. Quite at the beginning of the uprising, a group of three Russian icon merchants is caught in the plaza of Aiud, being suspected of having spread among the Orthodox Romanians in the Principality the news that an imminent attack of the Russian army will happen. A large-scale investigation was ordered by the Aulic Chancellery on March 31, 1785, to determine whether the rumor of the imminence of this attack was true. The documents issued by this investigation allow for the reconstruction of the route taken by Russian pedlars in 1784, offer minimal information on the selling strategy, which only partially confirms the fear of the authorities, as well as on the appearance of the pedlars and the icons they sold. Finally, the Aulic Chancellery recommended a ban on trade with Russian icons, and on July 28, 1785, the imperial decree banning Russian pedlars from entering the Habsburg Empire in the future was issued. Traces of their passage through the Principality have been found in insignificant numbers, whereas the ban helps to date to the last decades of the 18th century the few Russian mass production icons identified in museum collections and as a result of field research.
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    Russian Miter of Jerusalem Patriarchs (17th Century)
    (Saint Petersburg State University, 2019) Chesnokova, Nadezhda P.
    The archival records of the Posolsky prikaz (Ambassadorial office) in the Russian State Archiveof Ancient Acts (RSAAA) contain evidence for the intensive contacts between the Jerusalem patriarchand the Russian government in the first part of the 17th century. The file on the Moscow visit of the Jerusalem patriarch’s envoy, Archimandrite Anthimos, in 1643 has been preserved with unique completeness.This provides new details on the works included in the order: the list of icons and materials used, the names of icon-painters and silversmiths, information about the organization of the artistic process as a whole and, finally, the cost of the materials and works executed. The miter of the Jerusalem patriarchs was made four years after a similar item was created in the Kremlin’s workshops in 1640 for the archbishopof Sinai. After leaving Moscow, the miter was altered in a way. It remains nowadays in the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai. Originally, the lower diadem of the Sinai miter was ornamented with fur. Moreover, there was no cross on the upper round patterned plate. The gem stones were added during the alteration. While decorating the miter, the Moscow masters had used pearls only. The sources say the Sinai miter was just a reproduction of an existing exemplar created earlier by court masters. The Jerusalem patriarch’s headdress was based on the same sample. Thus, we can imagine how the Jerusalem miter looked before its alteration, although there were some differences between it and the Sinai example. As we have already mentioned, the top of the Sinai miter was decorated with pearls, not gem stones, unlike the patriarchal headdress
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    Russian Orthodox Art in the Bulgarian Lands from the 16th until the Late 19th Century
    (Muzeul Naţional al Unirii Alba Iulia, 2020-04-04) Gergova, Ivanka
    Dès le milieu du XXe siècle, les chercheurs bulgares s’intéressent à l’étude des œuvres d’art religieux russe qui sont arrivées dans l’aire culturelle bulgare; mais ces études n’ont jamais été menées de manière intensive. Les futures approches devront collecter, cataloguer et étudier les collections plus importantes d’icônes, d’estampes et d’objets russes de culte, en rassemblant toutes les informations nécessaires qui concernent les modalités d’acqui- sition de ces objets, leurs donateurs et leurs histoires individuelles. Une attention particulière devra être accordée aux peintres russes qui ont vécu en Bulgarie, ainsi qu’aux Bulgares qui ont étudié les arts en Russie, sachant que ces derniers ont peint des icônes après le retour en Bulgarie. L’influence de l’art orthodoxe russe sur les sujets abordés et les styles utilisés dans l’art bulgare pourra compléter ce panorama. La présente étude se propose de faire le bilan des recherches en cours.
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    Russian Sacred Objects in the Orthodox East
    (Muzeul Naţional al Unirii Alba Iulia, 2020-04) Gerd, Lora
    La tradition du soutien russe aux églises orthodoxes de l’Orient et des Balkans a commencé a XVIe siècle et s’est poursuivie jusqu’en 1917. Au niveau gouvernemental, l’aide matérielle a été réduite et réglementée au XVIIIIe siècle, mais elle a gagné en générosité après 1830, en rapport avec l’évolution de la Question d’Orient et la rivalité des grandes puissances engagées au Moyen-Orient. L’article étudie le caractère et la distribution géographique du soutien de l’Église et du gouvernement russes, tout en observant que ces traits ont évolué dans le temps et qu’ils ont été in*uencés par les tendances politiques de certaines périodes. Il étudie aussi les nombreuses donations privées issues des pèlerinages en Terre Sainte et faites aux monastères d’Orient, aussi bien que celles résultant des relations personnelles avec le haut clergé. La tendance générale à augmenter les sommes et les dons jusqu’à la Première Guerre mondiale a été le résultat de la montée de la tension au Moyen-Orient et dans la Méditerranée orientale.
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    Saint Jean le Russe : pèlerinage et territorialité
    (RGH-La Revue de géographie historique, 2020) Seraïdari, Katerina
    Constructed in a locality of Evia in 1951, the church of Saint John the Russian constitutes one of the most important pilgrimages of Greece. The article examines the religious, memorial and commercial parameters of this pilgrimage, as well as the dimension of territoriality and its deployment on three levels: a) the models of identification of the refugees who brought the relic of the saint from their native Cappadocia to Evia in 1924, after the population exchange between Greece and Turkey; b) the feeling of familiarity of Russian pilgrims who come massively to pray in front of the relic; and c) the logic of appropriation. Adopting a diachronic perspective, the article shows the fundamental role Russians have played in the establishment of the saint’s worship since 1881 – when the forearm of the saint’s relic was offered to Russian monks at the monastery of Panteleimon of Mount Athos. The Russian offerings of the nineteenth century, which are exposed in the museum next to the shrine, bring the proof of this continuity and inscribe current Russian visitors into a “lineage” of pilgrims. Through these marks of territoriality, the limits between familiarity and appropriation are redefined: although the saint was their compatriot, he has always decided to stay with those who were the first to recognize his sanctity (even before his death), that is the Orthodox of Prokopi. If the Russian offerings of the nineteenth century give temporal depth to the relationship between the saint and the Russian pilgrims, the dimension of territoriality that these objects evoke, takes another form in the case of the refugees’ descendants: for them, the Russian offerings are a source of pride (proving the international reputation of theirsaint) but also the legacy of their Cappadocian ancestors, the Karamanlides. This Orthodox population was speaking Ottoman Turkish, but wrote in Greek characters: as their current descendants stress, the Orthodox of Prokopi decided to lose the use of Greek language in order to be able to keep their Orthodox faith. Although this Turkish-speaking population constitutes a challenge to the Greek national rhetoric, the reference to the Russians manages to “des-Ottomanize” the Orthodox of Prokopi, since the regular contacts between the two groups started at the end of a period of military confrontations between the Russian and the Ottoman Empire (the Crimean War and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878). The Russian offerings of the nineteenth century, but also the “Russian corner” (decorated with frescos of Russian saints) that one’s can find next to the reliquary of the saint, show the capacity of this site of pilgrimage to evoke other spaces (like Cappadocia, Mount Athos or Russia) and to develop, in a variety of forms, the dimension of territoriality.
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    Saint John the Russian (ca. 1690-1730) and the spread of his cult
    (University of Balamand, 2021) Seraïdari, Katerina
    This paper examines the development of St John the Russian’s cult in Cappadocia, and more specifically the historical and social conditions as well as the interests and intentions that played a role in its stabilization and diffusion. Encouraged by the representatives of the Greek Enlightenment who wished to give impulse to the “Hellenization” process and defend Orthodox faith against Protestant missionaries’ influence, this cult received a new impulse after the intervention of Russian monks at the end of the nineteenth century.
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    ‘Saints and Soldiers’ 19th-Century Russian Religious Art in Southern Bulgaria
    (Muzeul Naţional al Unirii Alba Iulia, 2021) Nikolov, Angel
    L’article clarifie l’histoire de plusieurs pièces du patrimoine mobile de deux institutions monastiques fondées par des citoyens russes en Bulgarie pour commémorer la bravoure et l’héroïsme des soldats et officiers russes tués pendant la guerre russo-turque de 1877-1878 : le Monastère de l’Ascension, avec son église ‘Saint-Alexandre Nevsky’, construite entre 1879-1882 sur ordre du célèbre ‘général blanc’ Mikhail Skobelev sur les collines de Bakadzhik, près de Yambol ; et le Monastère de la Nativité à Shipka, construit (et probablement con- sacré en 1902) à l’initiative de la mère du général, Olga Skobeleva, par un comité directeur dirigé par le diplomate et homme d’état russe Nikolai Ignatiev.
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    Studying Russian Icons in the Balkans
    (ISTORIYA, 2021-06-21) Boycheva, Yuliana
    The Russian religious artefacts - icons, liturgical utensils, veils, vestments and books and objects of private piety, held in museums and church or monastery collections in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean constitute a body of valuable art objects, and important material evidences related to the historical development of the relations between Russia and large region of South-Eastern Europe. This piety objects comes continually to the region for a long period through official, unofficial and private donations, or by pilgrimage and trade. Applying the cultural transfer approach in combination with the recent theoretically challenging openings of art history into visual studies and social anthropology RICONTRANS studies them not simply as religious or artistic artefacts, but as mediums of cultural transfer and political and ideological influence, which interacted with and were appropriated by receiving societies. Their transfer and reception is a significant and poorly studied component of the larger cultural process of transformation of the artistic language and visual culture in the region and its transition from medieval to modern idioms. In this dynamic transfer, piety, propaganda and visual culture appear intertwined in historically unexplored and theoretically provoking ways.
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    Texts and Icons in Worship, Communication, Propaganda
    (Muzeul Naţional al Unirii Alba Iulia, 2020) Borisova, Tatiana
    La présente étude se concentre sur le rôle joué par les textes liés aux icônes dans le culte, la commu- nication culturelle et la propagande des icônes lors de leur transfert. Ces textes se regroupent en trois catégories : les textes qui précèdent les icônes, les textes sur les icônes et les textes d’après les icônes. L’analyse de chacune de ces catégories aide à mieux déchiffrer la fonction et le rôle des textes dans la création et la perception, ainsi que dans les processus de transfert des icônes. Dans le cadre d’un transfert culturel, celui-ci se produit souvent dans un contexte où les signes verbaux se différencient des signes visuels. L’auteure donne quelques exemples de textes qui sont essentiels pour une interprétation exacte de certaines icônes russes transférées en Grèce du 5VIe au 5I5e siècle et détermine leur place dans la communication linguistique, spirituelle et culturelle. D’un point de vue mé- thodologique, elle s’intéresse aux conditions dans lesquelles les textes accompagnant les icônes russes devraient être étudiés, notamment dans le cadre de la recherche qui étudie le transfert de ces icônes russes en Grèce.