Reprezentarea Teofaniei în România: picturile sinagogilor și arta creștină ortodoxă
IMAGINING THEOPHANY IN ROMANIA: SYNAGOGUE PAINTING AND CHRISTIAN ORTHODOX ART

Summary/Abstract: Ideologically alien to Judaism and seemingly unrelated to Jewish religious art, the post-Byzantine artistic tradition constitutes a meaningful context for our better understanding the synagogue paintings in the regions where the Jews lived among a Christian Orthodox majority. Romanian Moldavia, lying between the eastern Carpathians and the Prut River, was such a land. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it became a refuge for Jewish immigrants from Poland and the Ukraine1, who brought with them the practice of decorating the synagogue interior with wall and ceiling paintings. The focus of the current paper, the images of the Divine Revelations on Mount Sinai and at the Burning Bush, is indicative of the acculturation of Christian Orthodox artistic expression in synagogue paintings.

• Details
• Contents