Anastasis: Research in Medieval Culture and Art (May 2016)
Peintures du sanctuaire et de la nef de l’Eglise de La Décollation de St Jean Baptiste du village d’Arbore / Paintings of the sanctuary and nave of the Church “The Beheading of St John the Baptist” from Arbore Village
Abstract
The paper presents two main aspects regarding the inside murals of the church in the village Arbore (Suceava county), whose restoration process will be finished next year. The church is a foundation of the great chef of the Moldavian army during the reigns of Stephen the Great, Bogdan III and of the first years of Stephen’s the Younger, Luca Arbore, from 1503. The first aspect regards the disputed problem of the author of the murals and of the moment of their realization. The starting point of the discussion is the information given by an inscription painted in the inner side of the enter arch to the nave: it gives the name of a painter “Dragosin son of pan Coman of Iasi” and the year 1541. As the inscription was painted in a light tempera technique and disappeared during the 50 years since its discovery. The author presents a other point of view, based on the analysis of the persons of Arbore family represented in the funeral and in the votive paintings in the church (number of children, their age, style), both of them conserving traces of vandalism and important re-paintings of the great damaged surfaces. Having in mind the dedication of the church “ Beheading of St John the Baptist” and the large cycle of his vita painted on the eastern wall of the narthex, as it was the custom during Stephen’s the Great reign (Pătrăuţi, Voroneţ, St Elie –Suceava, St Nicolas / Botoşani, St Nicolas – Bălineşti), corroborated with the stylistic analysis, I proposed to accept two phases for the realization of the murals: the first one during the founder’s life († 1523) with an anonymous chef of the painters team, and the second one attributed to Dragosin/Dragoş Coman, author only of the repair of the damages caused by the Ottomans in 1538 war. The second aspect regards the restitution of the iconographic program of the cupola, the chancel and the nave, with its peculiarities, new themes or new artistic solutions for the traditional ones.
