26. Icon on glass, "Saint Archangel Michael", first workshop in Nicula, 1796, museum piece, collectible

The icon, on the background made of gold leaf, giving him an authentic light, depicts Archangel Michael in military cloths, standing on a crowd of clouds. His garments are painted according to the typical, but more liberally treated: a dark green shirt with embroidered cuffs, over which he wears a short red tunic. The long, red cloak is draped with gold on the left shoulder, with a knotted end on the right shoulder. His wide wings are painted in green, and the feathers are graphically realised in black. His middle-parted hair falls in curls down his back. Around the head he wears a halo. The archangel holds the sword in the right hand and in the left the chalice of the last communion made with silver leaf. The icon is dated twice: once in Latin ciphers (median) and once with Cyrillic characters, in the lower part of the icon, "1796". (M.B.)

References

"Despre icoanele pe sticlă așa-numite de Iernuțeni" ("About the icons on glass so-called from Iernuțeni"), by Ana Dumitran published in "Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Historica", 15/I, 2011, p. 131-180

Dimensions

width 51 cm, height 62 cm

Description

tempera gold and silver foil on glass, stained and painted frame

Research information

Easily identifiable due to the large format and the background covered with gold leaf, icons of this type were first reported in the locality of Joseni in Harghita county, in 1900, with the following words: "there are 4 glass icons in the church in the most vivid colours by Popa Sandu in 1796". The first who made a connection between Popa Sandu in Iernuțeni county, today incorporated in the town of Reghin, was Atanasie Popa. The next bibliographical mention belongs to Ion Apostol Popescu. From Ion Apostol Popescu's text it can be deduced that he saw the icons from Joseni, as he compares their "particular beauty in terms of drawing and chromaticism" with the "Nicula school of glass painting", considering that the latter did not influence the execution of the former, but leaving room for the possibility that Popa Sandu may have learned the craft at Nicula. An important point in the study of Transylvanian icons on glass is the publication, in 1975, of the work by Iuliana and Dumitru Dancu, Peasant painting on glass, in which "icons from Iernuțeni" were given a special chapter. Thus, according to Dancu family, the one who signals them is Stefan Meteș, and the one who locates Popa Sandu in Iernuțeni is Ion Apostol Popescu. It is, therefore, all the more interesting to establish the paternity of Popa Sandu on the icons with which his work is illustrated, given that the only element of connection with the Joseni icons that could be invoked is the dating in 1796 and the years immediately following. However, a new argument is brought forward, namely the confirmation by local tradition ("the elders of the village and the priests of the neighbouring villages") of the existence in Iernuțeni of an icon painter by the name of Popa Sandu, "around the year 1800", who "would have painted both on wood and glass". The latest studies in the field argue that the group of icons from Joseni and all the others together with which they form a relatively compact group should be separated from the name of Popa Sandu from Iernuțeni and studied separately, as a result of the collective effort of an early Niculean workshop. Such an intense activity, carried out in a workshop where we see several apprentices being trained consecutively, with such a great irradiation of production, cannot be brought to light without also trying to find a location, especially since the artistic phenomenon concerned offers enough clues for a plausible answer. He has in fact been indicated, most of the scholars who have encountered this kind of icons and who have not subscribed to the attribution proposed by the Dancu couple pronouncing directly for Nicula or - in a more reserved formulation - for a "centre in northern Transylvania, probably Nicula". Therefore we can reason that: -all those who train in the workshop under discussion belong, stylistically speaking, to the Niculean centre and it would be nonsense to think that they travelled a long way to master the mysteries of painting elsewhere, when they had such a gifted craftsman at hand; - the clumsiness in rendering the physiognomic components also leads to Nicula as a stylistic peculiarity; - the area where the icons are displayed covers practically the same area where the Nicula icons are present, no other centre has managed to expand so much. Thus, at the level of knowledge available to us today, we can say that the icon was made in the vicinity of the first workshop founded in Nicula by an as yet anonymous master (but who is, erroneously, traditionally designated and known as Popa Sandu from Iernuțeni). (A.D.) Five similar works are in the collections of the Sâmbăta de Sus Monastery, Saint Nicholas Church (Calbor, Brașov county), the museum collection of the Orthodox Archdiocese - Alba Iulia, the collection of the Museum of the Metropolitanate of Cluj and one in the collection of the Liane and Alexandru Bidian family.

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