By Elisabeta Negrău | G. Oprescu Art History Institute, Romanian Academy, Bucharest

Overview

The Byzantine templon developed as a closing system for the sanctuary apse. It consisted in a row of low parapets interrupted in front of the altar and topped by columns supporting an architrave. Its lateral development differed depending on the plan of the church. The architrave could hold sculpted or painted images, often of a Deësis expanded with angels and apostles. There are indications about the existence of such images from as early as the 6th century (ex: Hagia Sophia and St. Polyeuktos in Constantinople). From the end of the 11th century onward, the architrave could also contain a cycle of Great Feasts, at the same time when their number and selection began to be fixed. At St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai and in the monasteries on Mount Athos, the appearance of such image cycles on templa was linked to the presence of lay donors and pilgrims, to whom the icons reminded of the liturgical calendar, while the Deësis was present to receive the prayers of those who attended the liturgy. The two cycles could coexist on architraves, but generally an iconostasis displayed a single register of images on the epistyle. The proskynetaria paintings of Christ and the Theotokos on the two piers flanking the front of the sanctuary apse in the cross-in-square churches, fixed in the 12th century, became the precursors of the so-called Despotic Icons of the next century. The royal doors (11th-century additions) began displaying the scene of the Annunciation by the 12th century.

The earliest surviving examples of wooden templa date to the 14th century – Sts. Anargyroi church in Ohrid, Xenophon Monastery on Mount Athos. Toward the mid-14th century, the hesychastic trends began to influence both the form and the function of templa, encouraging a more mystical visual experience of the liturgy. The large despotic icons placed in between the columns (Dečani Monastery) prevented physical and visual access to the sanctuary. At the same time, it became common for a large painted and sculpted wooden crucifix to top the architrave (Pantokrator Monastery on Mount Athos, early 15th century).

From Wallachia, no templa from the 14th to the 16th century have survived. However, the existence of several disparate icons that have been preserved from the 16th century allows us to recreate how the structure of the iconostasis evolved in Wallachia in the first post-Byzantine century.

Key Issues and Debates

According to André Lecomte du Noüy, the restorer of the monastery of the Dormition of the Mother of God at Curtea de Argeș (1515–17) between 1875 and 1886, the initial iconostasis of the church founded by the Wallachian ruler Neagoe Basarab (r. 1512–21) was made of carved stone. The French restorer identified a series of stone elements that he attributed to the original templon. This altar screen was destroyed by fire and replaced in 1682, under Prince Șerban Cantacuzino (r. 1678–88), by another one carved in wood. The Syrian traveler Paul of Aleppo noted in 1657 that the original iconostasis had two precious Despotic Icons. The one of Christ, known as the Stabbed, was a Byzantine mosaic icon brought from Constantinople. A marginal cycle of scenes, with Greek inscriptions, on the icon recalled the history of the stabbed icon from the chapel of the Samaritan Well in Constantinople, recorded in Byzantine sources in 1389–91. The reverse of the icon showed the Crucifixion scene. Bilateral icons with this iconography were characteristic of the late Byzantine period. The Mother of God icon was an older wonderworking image as well. A drawing of the icon of the Mother of God with Child made in 1860 by painter Gheorghe Tattarescu depicted the duo as an Eleousa type. Both icons were reportedly lavishly decorated by Neagoe Basarab with gilded revetments and precious stones.

Two early 16th-century icons with dimensions of 71 x 52 cm that form a Deësis composition, pieces from the collection of the Romanian Orthodox Patriarchate now in custody at the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest, are thought to come from an iconostasis dating from the period of Neagoe Basarab. One displays Christ Pantokrator on the throne and the other one shows St. John the Baptist and the Archangel Gabriel. A third example, showing the Mother of God and the Archangel Michael, survives in an 18th-century copy. They present conspicuous stylistic and compositional similarities with the icons of the iconostasis of Krušedol Monastery (Serbia), which is an early 16th-century Wallachian donation and project. It has been proposed that the three panels were originally part of an architrave that topped the stone iconostasis at Curtea de Argeș. Their dimensions are close to those of an icon (today lost) originating from Cotmeana Monastery in Vâlcea (1387‒89), depicting the Mother of God in prayer, mid-length (68.5 x 46.5 cm), dated around 1400 and thought to have come from a three-panel Deësis composition crowning the original iconostasis of the katholikon.

A similar icon to those from the Romanian Patriarchate, depicting the Mother of God in prayer followed by Archangel Michael, now in the Museum of Hurezi Monastery (54.5 x 37 cm), was also part of a Deësis decorating an architrave of an early 16th-century iconostasis from the court context of Neagoe Basarab.

The Deësis scene was usually extended with representations of the 12 apostles. The row could be composed of panels containing two figures in full silhouette, as shown in the icons at the Patriarchate of Bucharest, Krušedol, and Hurezi, or a single full-length figure, as can be seen in an unpublished 16th-century icon kept at the church of the former hermitage at Peri (Vâlcea County), depicting the Apostle Paul. According to stylistic features, the icon of St. Paul from Peri can be related to paintings such as the frescoes in the sanctuary of Cozia Monastery's infirmary church (1543), with which it shares similarities in terms of the manner of the paint strokes and the letter style of the inscriptions. The apostles could be represented also mid-length, as evidenced by the late 15th-century icon of St. Apostle Luke from Bistrița Monastery in Vâlcea County (54.5 x 38,8 cm) and the icons of Sts. Apostles Matthew and Mark (59 x 47 cm) from the National Museum of Art in Bucharest (mid-16th century). The Deësis with mid-length apostles was most common in the Balkans during the 16th century.

Except for the larger two Deësis icons from the Patriarchate of Bucharest, all the others display similar dimensions, of ca. 50 cm in height. Their considerable size leads us to believe that they have been part of iconostases that contained a single row of icons on the architrave, displaying the Deësis scene extended with apostles. Virtually no Feast icon from the 16th century has been preserved. This fact leads us to suppose that the cycle of the Great Feasts was not a common feature on 16th-century Wallachian iconostases.

Most of the Wallachian churches were built on a triconch plan, which implied that the pastophoria were located in niches in the sanctuary apse. Thus, from the very beginning, the iconostases must have had side entrances, or at least a door corresponding to the prothesis area, for liturgical purposes (as the masonry templon at Râmeți monastery in Transylvania, early 14th century). An icon from Curtea de Argeș representing the Threnos, today found at the National Museum of Art in Bucharest (65.5 x 111 cm), has been attributed to an early 16th-century workshop of Cretan influence. The panel preserves on the back the Cross flanked by the instruments of the Passion. The image also preserves numerous nail traces on the back. Its large dimensions indicate that it was likely not an icon for private devotion. More probably it could have been part of an iconostasis, maybe of the one of the two parecclesia of the monastery at Curtea de Argeș, dedicated to St. Nicholas and Sts. Apostles. In the 16th-century Cretan environment, icons representing the Lamentation of Christ were placed in iconostases above the royal doors or the prothesis door.

The assumption that the Threnos icon from Curtea de Argeș could have come from an iconostasis seems to be justified by the existence of another icon preserved today at the Ciocanu Monastery (Argeș County). The icon (31 x 61.5 cm) is painted on a panel carved in three sections ending at the base in a trilobed accolade arch. On the central panel is depicted Christ in the tomb between the Mother of God and Apostle John, and on the side panels there are two archangels. The work has been dated to the mid-16th century. Its smaller dimensions than those of the Threnos icon suggest that it could have decorated the arch of a prothesis entrance of a mid-16th century iconostasis, while the larger Lamentation one could have been placed above the royal doors of an early 16th-century iconostasis from the monastic complex at Curtea de Argeș.

The despotic icons of Christ and the Theotokos usually had large dimensions, measuring ca. 100 cm height and 70 cm width. Together with the royal doors and the side entrances, they could sum ca. 3.5 m in width, leaving little to no room for additional icons in the despotic row in the triconch churches, which usually had altar apses of ca. 3-4 m width in the 16th century. However, icons like those of the Birth of the Mother of God (mid-16th century, Ostrov Monastery) and Sts. Peter and Paul (late 16th century, the National Museum of Art in Bucharest) are a strong indication that, by the mid-16th century, icons of patron saints and feasts began to be included in the despotic row even in the smaller churches.

The royal doors were most probably sculpted with palmettes or entrelacs surrounding the two panels forming the Annunciation scene, like in the late 15th-century to early 16th-century wooden examples found at Stoenești-Şuşani, preserved at the History Museum in Râmnicu-Vâlcea, a work influenced by the Macedonian tradition of wooden sculpture. The doors hypothetically come from the late 15th-century Bistrița or Govora monasteries. Up to the early 17th century, Late Renaissance and Ottoman-inspired decoration replaced the Byzantine repertoire of Wallachian wooden sculpture. The royal door and the deacon entrances were covered by embroidered curtains, usually displaying the Crucifixion or the Deposition from the Cross.

The wooden iconostases were most likely topped by a cross carved and painted with the scene of the Crucifixion. The iconostasis of the large cross-in-square church of the Metropolitanate of Wallachia, built between 1518 and 1537 in the capital city of Târgoviște and demolished in 1889, was, according to Paul of Aleppo, topped by a beautiful cross painted with the Crucifixion scene. A fragment from the 1536 iconostasis cross from the Dormition of the Mother of God church in Stănești (Vâlcea County), found today in the History Museum in Râmnicu-Vâlcea, a wooden piece painted with the scene of the Crucifixion, presents a type of sculpture with interlacements spread on the entire surface of the cross frame. Finally, the more modest churches probably had masonry iconostases or composed in a mixed technique of wood and masonry. Such masonry pedestals and door frames have been preserved at Bucovăț Monastery (1571‒72), and a masonry painted templon was made at Snagov Monastery in the late 16th century (after 1563).

Further Reading

Costea, Constanța. “Unpublished works to complete the catalogue of Wallachian painting in the sixteenth century.” Revue Roumaine d'Histoire de l'Art. Série Beaux-Arts 27 (1990): 19‒33.

The author argues that the three icons from the collection of the Romanian Patriarchate in Bucharest have been part of a Deësis row of an early 16th-century iconostasis that she linked to the center and the monastery at Curtea de Argeș.

Gerstel, Sharon E.J., ed. Thresholds of the sacred. Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2006.

This volume of collected studies offers new insights on several topics like proskynetaria, masonry screens, and the theology of the sanctuary barrier as reflected in Byzantine texts.

Lasareff, Viktor. “Trois fragments d’épistyles peintes et le templon byzantin.” ΔXAE 4 (1964‒1965), Στη µνήµη του Γεωργίου Α. Σωτηρίου (1881‒1965): 117‒143.

Lazarev offers a consistent synthesis of the evolution of the structure of the Byzantine templon in terms of its iconography, from the pre-iconoclastic period to the 15th century.

Lidov, Alexei, ed. Ikonostas: proishozhdenie, razvitie, simvolika [The iconostasis : origins, evolution, symbolism]. Moscow: Progress-Tradicija, 2000.

This is the most comprehensive selection of studies to date on the evolution of the iconostasis.

Melvani, Nicholas. “The Middle Byzantine Sanctuary Barriers of Mount Athos. Templon and Iconostasis.” In Απόδοση τιµής στην καθηγήτρια Μαίρη Παναγιωτίδη-Κεσίσογλου, edited by Platon Petridis, 305‒335. Athens: Πανεπιστήµιο Αθηνών, 2015.

The article focuses on the vestiges of Middle Byzantine templons on Mount Athos. The author extends the discussion also to the later evolution of the Byzantine templons and to the Athonite vestiges of iconostasis wood carvings and icons from the 14th century.

Negrău, Elisabeta. “The Evolution of the Iconostasis in Wallachia during the 16th Century.” In The Byzantine Heritage in Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, edited by Srđan Pirivatrić and Andrei Timotin, series Études Byzantines et Post-Byzantines 4. Supplementa. Heidelberg, 2021 (forthcoming).

Reevaluating the existing icons and wood sculpture fragments preserved from 16th-century iconostases from Wallachia, the article proposes a reconstitution of the general structure of the 16th-century Wallachian iconostases, focusing on specificities, continuities, and disruptions.

This contribution was sponsored by the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross.