Abstract
Peasant icons on glass offer a strange image of a folk art, clearly outlined and unique in its technical quality and sensitivity. While a few paintings on glass were found in Central Europe (mainly Bohemia and Austria), the area where this type of craft was practiced extensively and reached maturity was Transylvania and Northern Moldova. The beginnings of this artistic Romanian pursuit are not well known. Because of the frailty of the glass support, and of the poor adherence of the color to this shiny, non-porous surface, many, far too many, ancient icons on glass have disappeared over time. Icons found in different collections, which bear an indication that makes it possible to date them, belong usually to the second half of the eighteenth century (Fig. 10.1) (Wendt HC (1953) Rumänische Ikonenmalerei. Eine kunstgeschichtliche Darstellung. Erich Röth Verlag, Eisenach). In the Romanian area this genre reached its pinnacle between 1830–1900. After 1900 this technique was used by very few iconographers (Ioanidu IC, Radulescu GG (1942) Icons on glass.Bulletin of the Commission for Historical Monuments, fasc 113–114).
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Notes
- 1.
Raw materials used for manufacturing glass: the main ingredient quartz sand (silica), soda ash, limestone, and, sometimes, cullet (for furnace efficiency).
- 2.
Ultramarine—a complex mineral, a sulfur-containing sodium-aluminum silicate of variable composition (Na8-10Al6Si6O24S2-4).
- 3.
A blue to green pigment consisting of a mixture of cobalt oxide and alumina, in variable ratios.
- 4.
A greenish blue pigment containing mainly cobalt stannate.
- 5.
Before 1860 on the territory of today’s Romania the Cyrillic alphabet was used to write in the Romanian language. It was officially replaced between 1860–1862 by the Latin alphabet.
References
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Leonida, M. (2014). Icons on Glass: Materials and Technique. In: The Materials and Craft of Early Iconographers. SpringerBriefs in Materials. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04828-4_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04828-4_10
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