Museikon_1_2017

100 | Ioan Ovidiu Abrudan
“Deisis”, and the icon of the church’s patron: “Saint Luke
the Evangelist”. Last but not least, the same photo shows
a carved and gilded wooden artophorion placed on the
Altar Table, seen through the opening of the royal doors
in the iconostasis. The recently restored liturgical object is
one of the few pieces representing the oldest endowments
of the church. What is worth noting among the details
provided by this photographic document, are the two elliptical
windows that used to pierce the walls of the north
and south of the nave, right past the iconostasis.
Another intervention was made in 1938, immediately
after the installation of priest Ioan Chioaru in the parish.
The reparation of the interior walls then caused the
discovery of the original fresco fragments applied to the
balustrade of the trellisworks mast, from under the lime
underneath which they had been hidden for a long time.
The ensembles of images, as well as the inscription of the
Orthodox Church in Maieri were not reconditioned until
much later, in 1970, by painter Arutin Avachian. 17
We have so far been unable to identify anything from
the documentation done by the restoration painter, documentation
required for the authorization of such an intervention
on a heritage monument, which would have
spoken of the state of the images’ preservation after the
removal of the plaster covering them. However, one may
notice that the manner in which the artist acted upon the
old paintings implied obvious and extensive interventions
of reintegration and reprocessing, which makes it
even more problematic to identify the author of this part
of the 18 th century mural decoration, a completely unique
one, if we relate to the Romanian churches of the city.
Until the restoration of the fresco section of the trellisworks
mast (1965-1970), the entire painting of the church
interior was undertaken and entrusted to church painter
Nicolae Stoica. Regarding this new stage in the process
of adornment of the church, it is appropriate to point out
some circumstances that might prove significant to the
objective that we have set out for this study, namely to
recover any detail that could serve to a faithful reconstruction
of the former aspect of the church from Maieri.
First of all, church painter Nicolae Stoica refused the
request made by priest Ioan Chioaru and the parish
council to execute a new painting on the iconostasis of
the church, which, being built-in, was due to receive a
mural decoration. Since they did not succeed in convincing
Nicolae Stoica, the parishioners were content
to entrust the painting of the iconostasis to Ioan Căzilă,
a local painter, though much more modest in terms of
artistic endowment than Nicolae Stoica. The second detail
that attracted our attention, following the events of that
time, as they later appear in the parochial chronicle, refers
to the fact that Stoica painted the vault of the altar apse
in tempera and not in the fresco technique that he applied
to the rest of the church. These aspects that might suggest
that Nicolae Stoica had still found traces of the original
wall painting on the iconostasis and perhaps even on the
vault of the altar, which he had considered worth preserving.
The murals made in the 1960s radically altered the
interior layout of the Maieri church. The only part maintained
from the original decoration apparently concerns
the images preserved on the choir-loft parapet, also
affected by the above-mentioned restoration.
During the last decade, through the insistence of the
present-day parish priest, theology professor Irimie
Marga, other traces testifying to the past state of the
“Long Street” Church were also recovered. Among the
objects forgotten in the attic of the church, there were
several pieces of original liturgical furniture, such as the
royal doors which were replaced in the mid-1960s, two
candlesticks dating back to the turn of the 19 th century,
and an icon of “Our Lady with Infant Jesus” 18 , one of the
oldest endowments of the church. All of these patrimony
objects resumed their place in the church after being
properly restored and researched.
An essential support in reconstituting the authentic
image of the church from Maieri came as a result of the
discovery of two novel photographic documents in the
Archives of the Faculty of Theology from Sibiu. Both the
inside and the outside look of the “Long Street” Church
were recorded in these photos. The images were taken
before 1923, when the first modifications that altered and
dissolved the original appearance of the old monument
were mentioned. The two snapshots had been placed in
a file with various documents belonging to Metropolitan
Nicolae Bălan, along with other reproductions of ecclesiastical
monuments in Transylvania. One may thus
assume that they were made by Professor I. D. Ştefănescu,
a passionate photographer of monuments and religious
paintings he documented during his doctoral research.
Ştefănescu defended and published his doctoral thesis in
several volumes, starting with 1928. 19 It is known that,
during the decade following the 1918 Union Day in Alba
Iulia, I. D. Ştefănescu researched the churches that were
historical monuments throughout Transylvania. As a
historian of old Romanian religious art, he also visited
Sibiu. The close relationship of respect and friendship, as
well as the long collaboration between I. D. Ştefănescu
and Metropolitan Nicolae are also public knowledge.
Testimonies of such a relationship are still found in the
above-mentioned archive: epistolary documents and reproductions
from the snapshots taken by Professor I. D.
Ştefănescu.
Returning to the two photos of the church from Maieri,
the most important one in terms of documentary value
is the one showing the interior of the nave. It immortalizes
an overview of the iconostasis. The wall altarpiece,
as it was captured at the time of the shooting, was
covered entirely with a painted decoration. The iconographic
compositions were arranged on several registers.
Only in the spaces between the opening of the royal and
diaconal doors, portative icons enclosed in sumptuous
frames adorned with carved motifs were mounted in the
intervals between the apses and the diaconal doors, in the
same manner in which the crucifix with the prayers was
decorated. The royal doors and the two candlesticks that
can be seen in the picture were proved to be the recently
recovered and restored pieces, as mentioned earlier.
The iconographic program of mural paintings composes,
on superimposed registers, the series of feast icons,
the apostle frieze with the apostles in pairs, grouped
under trilobite arches, the images of the prophets on
the tympanum, framed in two-row oval medallions, and
ending in flanks with representations of the symbols of
the Evangelists. The ensemble culminates, in the highest
area of the altarpiece, with the apotheotic representation
of the “Coronation of the Holy Virgin”. The accuracy of the
photographic reproduction allowed us to distinguish the
features of a characteristic and particularly unmistakable
pictorial style, due in particular to the representations of
the twelve apostles, whose figures of large dimensions
offer more accurate details. It is the same artistic manner
we have noted in the paintings that decorate the walls
of certain churches in the counties of Sibiu and Brașov,
dating back to the same historical period in which one