Byzantine Artistic Traditions in Moldavian Church Embroideries

Abstract

Abstract: This article examines the range of religious embroideries produced in Moldavia during the fifteenth century, and especially in the decades after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. These church embroideries offer iconographies, styles, and techniques that both continued and adapted Byzantine artistic traditions and image types. The objects under consideration consist of liturgical vestments and veils, as well as tomb covers that reveal through their iconography, style, and execution the sophistication of late medieval Moldavian workshops and the aspirations and concerns of the royal patrons who commissioned them. Through visual and technical analyses of select Moldavian religious embroideries from the fifteenth century, this study exposes some of the ways in which Byzantine artistic and iconographic traditions of church embroidery were perpetuated and transformed at the Moldavian court in the crucible of the post‑1453 world.

Keywords

• byzantine artistic traditions
• Moldavian Church Embroideries
• fifteenth century.