Much has been written about the significance of the patrons and princes of the Renaissance in history, culture and religion. It is well known that at the very heart of the Renaissance—in fourteenth-century Florence—the Medici family distinguished themselves through the three principles of their patronage: ‘the beautification of the homeland’ (patriae decus), increasing support for those close to them (familiae amplitudo) and the development of the arts (incrementum artium)1, so that, a century later, still in the city on the Arno, Niccolò Machiavelli, secretary to the Florentine chancellery, was able to draft a manifesto for that very same Medici family: the famous Il Principe, with an entire chapter—the eighteenth—devoted to the prince’s belief that ‘you should appear to be nothing but mercy, nothing but loyalty, integrity of character and faith in God’2.
Very few European scholars amongst those who have examined the meanings and methods of patronage during the Renaissance and Baroque periods – within the scope of a specialised humanistic discipline known as ‘iconology’ – know anything about the way in which, in a small principality in the east of the continent, which was neither fully independent nor entirely subject during the period of Ottoman rule – more precisely, in the quarter of a century preceding and following the year 1700 – this far-reaching socio-cultural phenomenon came about through the impetus provided by a ruler who brought stability to a turbulent and uncertain age, to whom the Habsburg Empire conferred the title of ‘Reichsfürst’, whilst the Sublime Porte granted him a lifetime reign—a reign that the very Ottoman yatagan was to bring to a dramatic end. In the spirit and letter of the aforementioned Medicean precepts, the prince, who styled himself—as inscribed on the precious medals struck in his honour— ‘Constantinus Bassarab de Brankovan’, crowned his reign with the nobility of the artistic crafts he encouraged and patronised; he embellished the lands of Wallachia like no other, from Râmnicul Sărat to Hurezi, shaping – through his painters, stonemasons and builders – that pan-Romanian style which bears his name. Furthermore, the voivode contributed significantly to enhancing the cultural presence of those close to him, from Buzău to Mehedinți, ranging from the ancient Cantacuzino lineage who advised, assisted and betrayed him in the most natural, noble manner, to the members of the more recent families of the Cândești, Drugănești and Brăiloai.
Finally, in the Machiavellian sense, the son of Papa of Brâncoveni and Stancă Cantacuzino proved his faith in God through the supreme act of his own martyrdom and that of his sons, in a manner that made a deep impression on a Europe for which Turkish exoticism encompassed even the barbarity of the execution on the Feast of the Assumption in 1714, of the man whom an author in the France of Louis XV had known as ‘le Prince Bessarabe’.
Brâncoveanu was a true prince of the era of transition towards modernity. He who, in a time of uncertainty, scrutinised his future through the occult paths of astrology, consulting horoscopes and predictions, but who, in an age of Baroque historicism, looked with pride towards the Byzantine past to which the roots of his maternal lineage extended; from whence came the coat of arms bearing the double-headed eagle carved into the stone of the portal marking the passage from the porch into the narthex of the great church at Hurezi Monastery; from whence sprang the gallery of Cantacuzino portraits in the same liturgical chamber; from whence, at last, the presence in that same monastery in Vâlcea, in the ‘House of Books’, as the inscription painted in 1708 designates the monastic library, of the volumes of medieval Greek sources from the famous Corpus byzantinae historiae, published around the same time in Paris by the father of Byzantinology, Charles Du Cange du Fresne.
As I have also pointed out on another occasion 3, the attention paid to Byzantium was, in essence, also a look back at the beginnings of Orthodoxy, of which Saint Constantine Brâncoveanu wished to be the patron, following in the footsteps of Neagoe Basarab and Vasile Lupu; moreover, the origins of Christianity itself were examined in this way, hence the quite particular fondness for the veneration of the princely patron, who was the namesake of the 4th-century founder of Constantinople and the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great (it is well known that, in both the Eastern and Western Middle Ages, the designation of certain sovereigns as ‘new Constantines’ was a common feature of texts, with echoes in iconography). Brâncoveanu’s printed works abound with such references: ‘The Order of the Service for Saints Constantine and Helena’ – featuring engravings and depictions of the triumph of the cross over Maxentius, a subject which formed the very centrepiece of a scene painted in the aforementioned Hurezean narthex – was printed at Snagov in 1696, the following year, a ‘Panegyric Discourse on Emperor Constantine’, the one ‘like the apostles’, was also printed here in Greek, under the care of Saint Antim Ivireanul, the same scholar and hierarch who, in 1701, also in Greek, had the ‘Panegyric to the Great Constantine’ printed in Bucharest, again featuring engravings, a speech delivered by Ștefan Brâncoveanu, the prince’s son.
Linked to the name of this Wallachian prince is also the novelty of residential architecture – we are in the era when, in Europe, the English were coining the word ‘comfort’, whilst the French were coining the term ‘confortable’ – a style of architecture found in ancient political centres steeped in the prestige of history, such as Târgoviște or Bucharest, in their immediate vicinity – at Doicești and Mogoșoaia, where, in the inscription of 1702, the term ‘palace’ appears for the first time in the Romanian language – halfway between the two capitals – as in the case of the Potlog family – in venerable settlements linked to the history of Preda the Bedding-Maker’s lineage – such as the Brâncovenis, who gave their name to the princely family –; finally, in the heart of the Bărăgan, at Obilești, or north of the mountains, on Transylvanian soil, at Sâmbăta de Sus4.
This munificent and lavish monarch, the founder5 – ‘a Danubian Solomon from Ruse’, as a well-known foreign art historian described him, attempting, I imagine, a fleeting psychological foray into the Brâncoveanu portraits 6 – sought to establish, through his writings, but above all through his images, he established the legitimacy of his rule in a Baroque age of dizzying rises and falls, of terrible trials, and of insecurity offset by superficial, sumptuous splendour.
The understanding of Romanian civilisation around 1700 7 as the decisive era of the transition to the modern age – without abrupt breaks or spectacular upheavals, in a slow, yet resolute process of aligning with the rest of European culture – which Romanians were becoming increasingly familiar with through reading and travel – has, undoubtedly, gained an ever-growing number of supporters. And at its heart, it has recently become necessary for historians, art historians and literary historians to discern precisely the personality of Brâncoveanu, a monarch who set the standard – through himself, and through the scholars and artists of the Court with whom he saw fit to surround himself – for what this meant here, three centuries ago, the art of blending tradition with innovation, of the dynastic ideal and courtly splendour expressed in religious and residential architecture or in mural painting, with the new sense of dignity of the man of merit, regardless of their background, of the person who was beginning to lead a comfortable and ‘civilised’ life, in step with Europe.
…a monarch who set the standard for what this meant here, three centuries ago: the art of blending tradition with renewal, the dynastic ideal and courtly splendour expressed in religious and residential architecture or in mural painting, with the new sense of dignity for people of merit, regardless of their origins—people who were beginning to know how to lead a comfortable and ‘civilised’ existence, in step with Europe.
Renewal of forms, traditionalism in artistic structures, a gaze towards a medieval past bathed in Bessarabian glory, but also towards contemporaries who sought to express, through art, their superior culture and the exceptional status they had attained in Wallachian society – such was the case with the Cantacuzinos, related to the ‘prince of gold’, who themselves directly paved the way for this era and subsequently brought it to fruition through artistic patronage of a distinct character – the quarter-century of Brâncoveanu’s rule, between 1688 and 1714, signified, above all, the emergence of a ‘national’ cultural expression in which posterity has sought to see, with pride or nostalgia, the embodiment of a local spirit in original forms, unmistakable in this part of the world.
This era was, as we recall, for Blaga, a ‘wonderful blend of Renaissance and Byzantinism, of Baroque and Orientalism’, ‘a comforting allusion to what might have been an era of true Romanian (history)’8 More than that, however, it was an impressively organic reality during the heyday of the Brâncovean style, shaping the future for at least a century in the realm of the visual and literary arts, and inspiring a ‘revival’ of a modern, romantic attempt to capture the ‘national soul’ on the threshold of the last century. In a word, it remains a milestone in the history of the Romanians’ transition from medievalism to modernity.
- 1
A. Chastel, Art and Humanism in Florence in the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Paris, 1959, p. 15.
- 2
The Prince, ed. N. Façon, Bucharest, 1960, p. 66.
- 3
Constantin Brâncoveanu between ‘Casa Cărților’ and ‘Ievropa’, 2nd ed., Bucharest, 2012, p. 64, with the following text.
- 4
Constantin Brâncoveanu between the ‘House of Books’ and ‘Europe’, p. 93.
- 5
Constantin Brâncoveanu between the ‘House of Books’ and ‘Europe’, p. 75.
- 6
H. Focillon, ‘L'ancien art roumain’, in Moyen Age, Survivances et reveils, Montreal, 1945, p. 190.
- 7
For this conclusion, see R. Theodorescu, op. cit., p. 19.
- 8
‘The Mioritic Space’, in The Trilogy of Culture, ed. D. Ghișe, Bucharest, 1969, p. 236.