Until forty or fifty years ago, Romanian houses in Transylvania villages were decorated with numerous icons, vividly colored, sometimes ten or more crowded on the same wall. The chromolithographs were still unknown in the villages; therefore it was the glass icon with its violent, but still appealing colors that felt right to the peasant. The Romanian icons on glass express the mentality and the sensibility of the traditional Romanian village community, reflect the spirit and the imagination of the peasant painter.

The peasant illustrated in the icons his own considerations about life and social justice, his own ethics and his idea of afterlife, the invisible world, inserting in this context, spontaneously, biblical stories or themes from The Old and New Testament in the only known reality, the Transylvanian village.


The origin of the painting on glass

The origin was widely debated during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The published records do not go beyond the first half of the nineteenth century. The first mention is related to that famous traveler Ion Codru-Dragusanu and it may be found in a letter dated "Milano1839." While admiring the celebrated Brera picture gallery, he asks his imaginary correspondent, "What is your opinion, you have seen your life only in the paintings hanging on the walls of Nicula Church?"
Nicula is situated at thirty miles northeast of Cluj, two and half miles from the small town of Gherla. In 1699, the Nicula church became famous because of an icon of the Blessed Virgin that was hanging in the small wooden church of the monastery. The gossip was that the icon was shedding tears.

How old are the Romanian icons painted on glass? There is specific mention of an icon on glass as early as 1703, but it was not until the late 1700's that there was any substantial number of them catalogued. From about 1830 through 1900, the art flourished. Since 1900, fewer and fewer were painted and now the art of this type has nearly vanished.

The painting on glass as genre of folkloric creation and as artistic métier was considered to be characteristic to the oriental part of Central Europe, in particular to Bohemia, Austria, Silenzia, Moravia, Slovakia and Galizia, where the first centers of painting on glass appeared, favored also by presence of the first glass workshops in the region. Romania was the farthest eastern country where it was found. It appears, however, that Transylvania was the center of the art form. By contrast with other people that paint on glass, the Romanian painters adopted the orthodox Byzantine iconography.

The technique of the painting on glass developed in this region from a basic antic folkloric form of art without any urban influences. It was a folkloric art of a pure quality, which permitted the Romanian icons to be individual creations of the craftsman. At the beginning of the XVIIIth century, the Romanians from Transylvania replaced the expensive icons on wood with the ones on glass, much more affordable and made by local craftsmen. Transylvania, starting with the XVIII-th century until the beginning of the XX-th century, was under foreign domination and the Romanian well-educated and prosperous class was not strong enough to be able to finance a developing artistic life. The church was practically the only cultural center making all the efforts to maintain the continuity of Romanian traditions, supporting the local communities in the construction of churches and decorating them with icons on glass, paintings and frescoes.

The iconography

The Transylvanian icons on glass, designed for the peasants and worked by them used a language known to the people, their symbols and their artistic codes, and transmitted the message of the orthodox faith using the way of expression of the simple persons who expected from religion protection and relief. Therefore the thematic of the paintings on glass were mainly dedicated to the saints, to the work and everyday life protectors and to their spiritual and material richness, to the health and home protectors, to the herds and harvests, to the bearers of fortune. The orthodox icons were painted on two different materials: wood or glass, called glàjà, hand made or industrial made. Either of them, the icons painted on glass or on wood have always endured Byzantine iconographic influences, from the very beginning to these days.
The iconographic Byzantine themes, in general, were respected by the peasant painter in conformity with the rules imposed by the church; but sometimes their interpretation was creative, adding to the religious aspects details with character folkloric and comic reflecting the every day life in the village. The peasant masters gave the traditional models and themes a different interpretation according to their imagination, adding to the icon's structure elements coming from the rural landscape. Saints dressed in folkloric Romanian costumes, the power representatives placed in hell as damned personages; family scenes where Virgin Mary nursed Jesus-child.
This was the particularity and the iconographic originality of the works of the master-painters of the icons in the peasant traditional world; works impregnated with sacred but also with a profound rational thought, with attentive observation and criticism of the quotidian reality.
The Romanian icons on glass are particular for their decorating properties, the vivacity of the colors, for the expressivity of the drawing simplified to the essential features and for the luxuriant ornamental vegetation.


The peasant painters

With very few exceptions, these painters worked from paper models or "patterns" (at Nicula) and "izovade" (at Sheii.) These models were sometimes inherited, or created by the painter himself, by transfer from an old icon, or by free drawing from an icon or an engraving that they held in front of them.
With time, the names of the most famous masters were lost. Their work was anonymous, and it was dedicated to God. The individuality of each of them existed only as long as they expressed the individuality of the community they lived in. To some of them this was a second métier that followed the farm work. Some others instead specialized together with the whole family, and considered this trade their principal occupation.
Very often, those belonging to this last category were also churches decorators.
After 1880, or thereabouts, at Nicula, Gherla and Sheii Brasovului, one icon was no longer painted by a single artist. The art was learned in the family, and transmitted from one generation to another along with the tradition, the models, the inspiration sources and also the technical secrets. In the workshops, various painters would each paint a particular portion of a painting (e.g. outlines, heads, hands, etc.) and a master painter would put on the finishing touches prior to the sale of the icon.
Some of these painters initiated schools of painting on glass; and their gift brought them fame, along with the way out of the anonymity and of the modesty that characterized the religious spirit. It existed also a code of honor, one deontology of the trade of the masters of icons. They had to purify their spirit and body; they had to be the most representatives of their families, the most gifted, without any physical or moral defect. It was saying that their dowries and talents would affect the icon itself. For each master, the artistic talent would harmonize with his character, bringing him into being noble and placing him above any normal condition.
Beyond the divine gift, the icon painter, obtained, thanks to a special preparation and a series of acquaintances without which this type of trade could not be practiced, not just of technical nature, but also spiritual, being considered "divine secrets", which were secrets that couldn't be transmitted to anybody that was not part of the closed circle of painters. These "secrets" were transmitted, using an old way, from the master to the apprentice through words and practice and through a spiritual guidance of the pupil through words.
The ceremony of the painter's consecration was officiated by a sacerdotal believed to posses the gift of God and being able to transmit it to the others.

Once finished, the icons were "taken on the road" to be sold, in a wood basket, where they were tied together, face to face. The icons were sold for money or, preferable in change for cloths made of cotton, silk, linseeds, towels or even grains.

The art of icons on glass started to decline at the beginning of the XX-th century and the Romanian workshops of painting on glass started to disappear after the Second World War.
The lasting icons absorbed either the technical influences from the Occident or those from the Christian Orient configured in the orthodox iconography and in the Byzantine style. They are immortal testimonies and had a rather strange fate. Loved by the peasants and hated by urban people who found them ugly, the icons were always appreciated by the art fans and specialists.

From the first icon on glass from Nicula church, the following characteristics of good quality icons stand out. One notes the simplicity and the primitiveness of the draftsmanship; the sketchy or extremely reduced composition; the margin influenced by popular ornamentation; the richness, the intensity of the colors and the sincerity of the feeling. We are faced with a world of art that conveys something distinctly elemental, authentically popular and of an unsophisticated beauty.

As part of the Romanian folk art, the peasant painting on glass represents the highest form of esthetic manifestation with ancestral roots. Materialized in the form of the icon, the peasant painting on glass took its thematic from the biblical legends, adapting them to the typology of the specific ambience. Born as a decorative expression and not just an artistic phenomenon, the icon was also a courageous testimony of an oppressed past of misery.

The reproductions of the Transylvanian icons are original works, entirely hand made using the same traditional techniques as the peasant painting.

They are unique works of art, where the effects of the colors on the glass are unrepeatable.