Cercetare Bucovina. Vedere de pe deal cu mănăstirea și biserica Sucevița (1980)

Ioan George Andron · 1980

The Church from Sucevița Monastery dedicated to “Resurrection of the Lord” was included in the World Heritage List in August 2010. The church was built between 1582 and 1584, built in the style of Moldavian architecture, a style consolidated during the reign of Stefan cel Mare. The style is a harmonious blend of the Byzantine and Gothic art elements, plus architectural elements of the old wooden churches from Moldova. The exterior painting of Sucevița Monastery is the best preserved part of the group of Moldavian churches with exterior painting, the only one that preserves its north side, where the stage “Ladder of Virtues” (Scale of St. John Scararul) is represented. The blending of the colors, predominant being the raw green metallic and red, a color attributed to the Holy Spirit, symbolizing the spiritual renewal, which stands out by a chromatic multitude, harmonizing with the green of the forests and pastures surrounding the monastery. In Sucevița, it is the narrative character of the paintings, which made the unity of the ensemble a lot of small paintings, each with his artistic personality. The painting of Suceava is the most iconographic complex of the feudal churches in Moldova. The monastery area is a quadrilateral with sides of 100 and 104 meters, surrounded by walls 6 meters high and 3 meters thick, being built of raw stone with mortar binder. The walls show in the upper part firing holes that were accessible by a continuous street road, reconstituted today only partially, and the four corner towers of the perimeter, next to the entrance one, situated on the north side, reinforce the impression of mediaeval fortress given by the massive walls. Inside the monastery are also rooms of the old princely house and cellars where a fabulous fortune would have been hidden, according to the testimony of Ion Neculce. The fourth corner tower - the bell tower, situated in the north-west corner of the precinct, has a square plan and is provided outwards with three massive square buttresses, probably added later for reinforcement, with the bell tower room accommodating the two bells from the time of the founders, decorated with the Moldavian coat of arms and the weapons of the Movilesti family. The entrance tower in the courtyard of the monastery has a square plan and is positioned in the middle of the north side, being guarded outside the precincts by two imposing buttresses, showing above the vaulted gangway two floors of which the first one is intended for the Buna Vestire chapel. Also in Sucevița one finds, in the former council hall of the monastery, a museum that houses an extremely valuable collection of embroidery from the 16th to the 16th centuries, portraits of the princely brothers Movila, tetraevangheliare fared in gilded silver, a gilded silver capsule with a strand from the hair of Lady Elizabeth, wife of Ieremia Movila, or an iconostasis carved in baroque rococo style printing wood in 1801. Because of its complex value and especially the educational, religious, cultural role, etc., the fame of Sucevița Monastery has long since passed the country’s borders. This gorgeous pearl of Romanian Orthodoxy enrolled among the works of universal culture.