Romanian handbooks on manuscript

illumination in the 18th century

Marta Ursescu and Sorin Ciovica

ABSTRACT Several mid-18th-century or early 19th-century Romanian manuscripts on manuscript illumination have
been identified as corresponding to an 18th-century Painter’s Guide. Most are translations of Greek hermeneia such as the
Hermeneia on the Art of Icon-Painting or Mount Athos Painter’s Guide by Dionysius of Fourna (1726–1733). Other texts
used in Romanian artistic practice were of Italian origin, or were included in De atramentis cujuscunque generis, written by
Petrus Maria Caneparius, dated 1718. Additional sources are based on Russian podliniki: manuals for stylistic models with
illustrative sketches but with almost no explanatory text. This paper provides an introduction to 18th-century Romanian
texts on manuscript illumination, their context and their use.

An overview of 18th-century Romanian art
In the 18th century, Romanian art was dominated by
two different traditions: the Byzantine religious art of
Moldavia, Walachia, and both the Orthodox and ‘Western’
art from Transylvania and Banat. This may be explained
by their political history. In medieval times, these territo-
ries occupied a strategic position at the crossing of three
expansionistic political powers: the Austrian Empire, the
Ottoman Empire and Czarist Russia. Under the continu-
ous threat of confrontations, the Orthodox faith provided a
basis for national unity for the different regions, while their
culture gave them the strength to assert the right to exist
(Iorga 1929).
Transylvania was influenced by Catholic domination from
the 15th century onwards, while the Orthodox religion of the
vast majority of locals was only accepted as official after 1781,
following the edict of faith toleration issued by Joseph II, the
Austrian emperor. In this context, the Transylvanian artistic
tradition is a symbiosis of Western and Eastern technologies,
in issues relevant especially to the development of icons and
of murals in wooden churches (Iorga 1925, 1929). Meanwhile,
Moldavia and Walachia, Romanian territories under the
authority of the Ottoman Empire, managed to gain pro-
tection and to maintain their state identities and internal
autonomy by paying tribute to the Ottoman sultan.
Thus Romanian territories represented a Byzantine
centre of culture for the whole Balkan peninsula, attract-
ing many Orthodox scholars from other countries who fled
Islam. They all promoted religious art and, through their
faith, supported a national conscience under the protection
of Romanian voivodes or the nobility (Elian 1959; Iorga 1929;
Lafontaine-Dosogne 1987).
A comparison between 18th-century religious art-
works by Romanian masters and those of the same period
in the Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria and Russia shows that
regionalism precluded any uniformity and simultaneity in
the entire Orthodox geographical area (Moutafov 2001).
Romanian art developed on the basis of its own tradi-
tion as well as in close contact with the art of neighbour-
ing countries, unifying elements from local areas with
Byzantine, south Slavic and Western European traditions
(Iorga 1929; Lafontaine-Dosogne 1987).
Yet, considering the limited number of Eastern painters’
handbooks compared to the number of Western treatises,
one may conclude that in the 18th century scant attention
was paid to the aesthetic aspect of Byzantine art. This might
be understood as reflecting a lack of demand, but in fact
derives from the intrinsic symbolism of Orthodox art. Its
distinctive significance exists in maximum stylisation, since
nature is seen as symbolic of the work of God. In accordance
with the seventh ecumenical synod (Niceea 787) and espe-
cially with the Constantinople synod of 843, a religious era
characterised by strict iconographic patterns began. Colour
was employed not to imitate natural hues of objects, but to
compose specific scenes in fixed colour schemes (Grabar
1961).
The tradition of Romanian manuscript illumination began
in the 15th century in Moldavia, at the Neamt monastery
scriptorium, where a school of miniature painting and cal-
ligraphy was set up by the monk Gavril Uric (Muntean 2005;
Turdeanu 1955). The school initiated by Uric developed the
‘Moldavian style’ (Muntean 2005: 189) which respected Byz-
antine techniques but allowed personal interpretations (Car-
tojan 1980). It was characterised by the use of vivid colours
and new decorative motifs such as floral and geometric ele-
ments, or formulaic portraits of rulers, represented as found-
ers of the churches and monasteries. By the 17th century,
beginning with Bishop Anastasie Crimcovici (or Crimca),
manuscript illuminators took the liberty of changing the
traditional compositional schemes in religious scenes (Fig.
1) (Cartojan 1980; Popescu-Vilcea 1972).

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M a r ta U r s e scu a n d S o r i n C i o v i c a

Figure 1 Miniature in the Psalm Book by Anastasie Crimca, a manuscript from 1616. Reproduced with permission of the
Dragomirna monastery, Moldavia. (See Plate 7 in the colour plate section.)

The 18th century introduced an authentic Romanian

decorative style, developed by artists descended from
peasants, monks or local priests. Many painters from
Walachia used to work in southern Transylvania or Banat,
and often included characters from daily life dressed in
national peasant clothes in their compositional scheme
(Cartojan 1980; Iorga 1929).
Under the patronage of the Orthodox church, a series
of scriptoria was active in the 18th century near the mon-
asteries. For instance in Walachia, from 1778 onwards, the
Caldarusani monastery school – led by the monk Ivan the
Russian – developed intense activity in copying and decorat-
ing manuscripts and training apprentices from the Danube
river banks (Fig. 2) (Cartojan 1980).

Documentary sources

New iconographic patterns were accepted in the Orthodox

areas and were applied as summarised in Byzantine artists’
handbooks in texts called hermeneia. The term derives from
a Greek word meaning ‘to be explained’ or ‘to be interpreted’.
A hermeneia consisted of a set of rules for illustrating the
immaterial beauty in Christian Orthodox churches, icons or
miniatures (Moutafov 2001). Under the Ottoman authori-
ties, the limited access to innovation made the use of old
sources and recipes mandatory. Various handbooks were Figure 2 Illuminated Miniature from the 18th century, Wallachia. The founders
based on transcriptions of Greek manuscripts written in of the Radu-Voda monastery, Bucharest. Reproduced with permission. (See Plate
Mount Athos monasteries; after the fall of Constantinople 8 in the colour plate section.)

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 R o m a n i a n h a n d b o o k s o n m a n usc r i p t i l lum i n at i o n i n t h e 1 8 t h c e n t u r y
in 1453 the Athonite monasteries represented the Ortho-
dox spirituality of the lost Byzantine Empire (Lafontaine-
Dosogne 1987).
The Orthodox tradition of writing instructions
concerning church or icon painting perpetuated the
Byzantine canonical aesthetics. The artists’ manuals from
the Orthodox area in Europe demonstrate that, irrespective
of geographical origin and national significance, their inter-
pretation was a common trend for Eastern church traditions
(Lafontaine-Dosogne 1987).
In the broadest European context, the most promi-
nent texts concerned with technical aspects of painting in
the Balkans were identified as On Painting by Panagiotes
Doxaras of 1726, the Hermeneia on the Art of Icon-Paint-
ing or Mount Athos Painter’s Guide by the monk Dionysius
of Fourna (1728–1733) and General Instructions or Herme-
neia by Christophor Zhepharovich (1726–1741) (Moutafov
2001).
The most complete and systematic compilation of Greek
texts under the monastic authority of Mount Athos is gener-
ally considered to be Hermeneia on the Art of Icon-Painting
or Mount Athos Painter’s Guide by Dionysius. The use of the
term Hermeneia Zographiskis in Dionysius’ title initiated a
particular genre; copies of his treatise on painting played a
significant role in the development of post-Byzantine reli-
gious art (Lafontaine-Dosogne 1987).
The text provided by Dionysius was compiled following
masters such as Teofan and Panselinos in their techniques
and visually outlined drawing. Enhanced by endorsement by
the patriarchate, the mural painter’s influence as a theorist
and writer was evident even half a century after the comple-
tion of his text and is considered as a counterpoint to the
innovation from Western Catholics (Didron and Durand
1845).
Romanian hermeneia
Currently, there is little information available on the methods
employed in medieval Romanian icons, frescoes and illu-
minated manuscripts. In Transylvania, the floral influences
derived from Western European Renaissance art were
implemented as a decorative pattern in the national style
of stone and wood carving, painting, furniture, bookbind-
ing, embroidery, metal pieces or ceramics (Kovács 2006).
The visual arts from the Orthodox areas however, were
following the strict iconographic instructions included in
hermeneia. Dionysius’ manual is an indispensable historical
tool for defining schools or movements and for charting the
concept of images. The noticeably intensified copying and
translation of Dionysius’ text during the first half of the 19th
century in Moldavia or Walachia is proof of its increasing
importance (Robu 2008).
These medieval texts follow the anonymous sources of
Dionysius and represent a synthesis of both iconographic
and craftsmanship traditions. The handbooks contain many
clear indications for conventional representations of evan-
gelists and saints, along with technical details on pigments,
binding media and tools, building on the technical experi-
ence of their predecessors (Ghenadie al Ramnicului-Noului
Severin 1891).
In the Romanian geographical area, the manuals of eccle-
siastical painting were written as workshop manuals; each
illuminator organised his notebook according to personal
needs while respecting Eastern church tradition. Some
treatises also included notes on medicinal herbs, cultiva-
tion of vegetables, apiculture and even the maintenance of
guns (Ghenadie al Ramnicului-Noului Severin 1891; Grecu
1936).
As manuscript illumination was considered to be a
gesture of humble piety, many painters did not sign their
handbooks on text writing and decoration even if they were
well-known artists in their time (Grecu 1936).
Through linguistic analysis of the script, several
Romanian manuscripts have been identified as correspond-
ing to Dionysius’ Painter’s Guide. Ascribed to the period of
the mid-18th century or early 19th century, seven compila-
tions of the most commonly used formulae of the Orthodox
tradition are preserved in the Romanian Academy Library
(Robu 2008). The texts are translations from Greek herme-
neia – both prior to and after the dated text of Dionysius
– written either in Romanian or Slavonic characters. As
knowledge was handed down from one painter to another
every handbook continues existing traditions, adding new
instructions. Some copies kept larger sections on graphic
representation; a few are compilations of quoted passages
from the Bible associated with specific iconography, while
others focus on technical details for preparing colours or
tools.
Among the identified manuscripts, the most extensive
version has been translated from an original Greek text dated
1775: Greek MS 446 in the Romanian Academy Library
(Litzica 1909). Completed between 15 January and 22
October 1805 at Caldarusani monastery, the translation of
the 1775 manual respected the Greek content at the expense
of the construction of a sentence in the Romanian language
(Grecu 1936). The manuscript is signed by the Romanian
archimandrite Macarie and would become the source for
several complete or partial copies (Robu 2008).
This version was discovered and published much later
in the 20th-century critical selection of hermeneias edited
by Vasile Grecu, a specialist in Byzantium linguistics. The
printed edition collates the comprehensive text written by
Macarie with fragments from some anonymous and older
sources, found in painters’ notebooks belonging to the
Academy collection of manuscripts (Grecu 1936).
Another 18th-century documentary source preserved
in the Romanian Academy Library is a Slavonic manu-
script from 1740, a manual with illustrative sketches but
with almost no explanatory text. This manuscript was col-
lated with another manuscript from the late 18th–early
19th century (Grecu 1936). Both were based on Russian
sketchbooks for stylistic models – podliniki, in Russian. In
Moldavia and Wallachia, this type of manual was used mainly
by iconographers to express the meaning of the icon, which
in their line of work was considered more important than
colour (Lafontaine-Dosogne 1987).
An additional model book containing portraits and
sketches along with a short text is a manuscript dated 1709
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M a r ta U r s e scu a n d S o r i n C i o v i c a
by Archbishop Antim Ivireanu, a medieval theologian who,
through his publishing activities, contributed significantly
to Romanian culture.
The structure of Romanian handbooks for manuscript
illumination
Even if most of the manuscripts identified were less complete
than the original text by Dionysius, the typical Romanian
painters’ manual consisted of formulae characteristic of the
hermeneia of the period dealing with mural and iconosta-
sis decoration, icon painting and manuscript illumination
(Grecu 1936). The chapters containing general instructions
for the painter included in the technical section are based
on ancient sources, while the iconographic part is linked
to post-Byzantine artistic practices. The technical passages
maintain the character of a notebook, with clear instructions
for the preparation and use of binding media, pigments,
oils, varnishes, gold leaf or instruments (Sandulescu-Verna
2000).
Some recipes reflect, through lexical synthesis, local or
temporal influences, by assigning Greek, German or Italian
words to certain concepts and materials. Several lists of
materials link pigments under names connected with their
trade sources. Similarly, names for measurement units vary
in different recipes from the Romanian oca and dram to
the Turkish term saitlic or the German pfund (Ghenadie al
Ramnicului-Noului Severin 1891).
In Transylvania, towns such as Bistritz (now Bistrita),
Kronstadt (now Brasov) and Hermannstadt (now Sibiu) acted
as intermediaries in long-distance trade between Western
and Central Europe and the Ottoman Empire, delivering
among others pigments from the Austrian Empire (Iorga
1925). Major elements in the transit trade of oriental goods
included comid (gum arabic, from the Greek Kommi) and
spices such as sofran (saffron) (Iorga 1925). Grana (cochi-
neal) arrived from Mexico to Seville and Cadiz and was
then shipped to Venice. This natural dye was brought to
Walachia and Moldavia through Italian merchants along with
indigo, brazilwood and lemn de Campes (campeche wood)
(Sandulescu-Verna 2000). Venice was also the source for
oriental paper and expensive dyed textiles (Luca 2007).
From the late 17th to the early 18th century, Walachia
and Moldavia had close cultural links with Venice (Luca
2007), which may explain why Italian terms were used in
post-Byzantine texts on decorative art. Elements of Western
artistic theory derived from Italy and applied to Romanian
manuscript writing were identified in De atramentis cujus-
cunque generis, a work from 1718 by Petrus Maria Caneparius
(Pamfilie 1910). Italian ink recipes ‘according to the teaching
of Fioravanti’ (Constantinescu 1997) were found in a 17th-
century Romanian cookbook manuscript, combined with
other useful tips such as washing silverware, cleaning rusty
weapons or making gunpowder (Constantinescu 1997).
Considering the intense activity recorded in the
Romanian area, an extended survey on illumination tech-
niques from the 18th century would be a useful step towards
26
the complete characterisation of Romanian art as part of
European trends.
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Authors’ addresses
• Marta Ursescu, Cultural Heritage Restoration - Conservation
Centre, National Complex of Museums ‘Moldova’ Iasi, 700028
Iasi, 1 Piata Stefan cel Mare si Sfant, Romania. (marta_ursescu@
yahoo.com)
• Sorin Ciovica, The ‘Gh. Asachi’ Technical University of Iasi,
700050 Iasi, 67, Prof. D. Mangeron Bd., Romania.