Early Modern Icons from Maramureș / Icoane maramureșene din perioada modernă timpurie

This book is devoted to the icons of Maramureș produced before the mid‑18th century. It adopts a broad, interdisciplinary perspective, examining the historical, confessional, architectural, and artistic contexts in which these sacred images were conceived and painted. Alongside the information gathered from the painted panels themselves and their photographic documentation, the study advances a series of hypotheses concerning the world of those who commissioned, painted, and venerated the icons that have survived to the present day. The analysis arrives at a central conclusion: between the 15th and 18th centuries, painting in Maramureș was in profound symbiosis with the art of the Ruthenian–Ukrainian iconographic schools in neighboring regions, even when the painters were local masters or artists hailing from other Romanian provinces. Following the dissolution of the Orthodox Balkan states and, above all, after the fall of Byzantium in 1453, the Ruthenian world was transformed into a crucible in which Eastern and Western iconographic traditions fused into a remarkable synthesis. By the second half of the 18th century, this new artistic vision had become the dominant aesthetic paradigm throughout the European territories of Eastern Christendom, including Maramureș, which fully embraced this horizon of forms, styles, and meanings.