#The Cantacuzinos

The narthex of the great church at Hurezi houses a gallery of nearly thirty portraits — the Cantacuzinos, the Brâncoveni, and the Bessarabian princes from Laiotă and Neagoe right up to Șerban Cantacuzino — through which Constantin Brâncoveanu visually legitimised his dual dynastic lineage: his paternal Bessarabian and his maternal Cantacuzino-Byzantine lineages. The same Baroque-inspired historicism can be found in the votive paintings from Târgoviște, in the portraits from Mogoșoaia and in the prints of the period, marking the beginnings of the historicist mindset of modern Romanian civilisation.

The study analyses the causes of the deposition and beheading of Saint Constantin Brâncoveanu (15 August 1714), based on domestic narrative sources — the chronicles of Radu Popescu, the Anonymous Chronicle, the accounts of Anton-Maria del Chiaro and Dimitrie Cantemir — and the Ottoman documents published by Mihai Maxim, demonstrating that the Cantacuzino family orchestrated the voivode’s downfall through intrigues, forgeries and denunciations, with the aim of seizing the rule of Wallachia.