The exhibition will feature more than 80 selected icons part of the iconography collections in the museums of Korca, Berat and the National Art Gallery in Tirana
TIRANA, Oct. 10 – A 500-year-old journey of Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons is the newest exhibition the National Arts Gallery in Tirana has scheduled to open in the next few days. The exhibition will feature more than 80 selected icons part of the iconography collections in the museums of Korca, Berat and the National Art Gallery in Tirana.
The icons data back to as early as the 14 century with St. Michael of Opar to conclude with icons of the Zengo family in Korca in the 1960s, when the ban of religion in Albania also put an end to this tradition.
“When trying to create an exhibition for a five-century old heritage, as in our case the situation is complex. This exhibition is not exhaustive, it only claims to acquaint the public with this heritage of Albanians as an ethnicity within the Ottoman empire, an early version of multi-culturalism where thoughts, ideas and schools communicated. Even this art transmits these influences coming from Venetian, Greek schools and a strange mix of oriental art which masters at that time have reflected based on the areas they have worked and the schools they were educated,” Rubens Shima, the director of the National Arts Gallery tells reporters.
Shima says it is high time Albania has a Byzantine museum. “Considering the heritage our museums carry, the exhibition space is too small to display the collections,” he argues.
Some of the most representative works of Albanian iconography are displayed in the Onufri National Museum of Icons which is located in the inhabited quarter of Berat Castle. This museum contains a rich iconographic collection and some religious service items. It is housed in a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, built in 1797 on the foundation of an older church with the same name. It features the work of perhaps the most remarkable Albanian iconographic painter, Onufri, active during the 16th century. His pieces are notable for the great realism and individuality introduced into his subject’s facial expressions and body positions, breaking with the strict conventions of the time. He was also the first to introduce the color pink into icon painting. The secret behind making this color was not passed on and died with him. His works are also noted for their intense use of colors and use of natural dyes.
The National Museum of Medieval Art in Kor衬 southeast Albania, is also one of the most important museum centers in Albania. Its collection includes over 7,000 art and cult items, mainly icons and less stone, wooden, metal and textile works of anonymous and well known artists from different areas of the country.
Many works from anonymous artists of the 13th-14th century and other well known ones like Onufri, Onufer Qiprioti, Teacher Kostandini, Jeromak Shpataraku, Selenica, Zografi Brothers, etc. are displayed there.
Byzantine period
The earliest portable icons in Albania come from the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The Virgin Hodegetria of Boria (Korca) and the Virgin of Blasti, in a cave at the Great Prespa Lake , are considered to be among the loveliest creations of Byzantine art. Of particularly striking beauty is the figure of the archangel Michael in the fourteenth-century Boria icon, says iconography researcher Petro Lufta.
Impressive specimens of Byzantine wall-painting have survived in remote locations such as the caves at Vlastojne, Letmi, and Kaljmet (twelfth century). Important works were produced in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, among which are the wall-paintings in the monasteries at Apollonia and Rubik (southΥast of Shkodra), and in the churches of Vau i Dejes and Berat Castle. The style of painting shows local and Byzantine, and also Western, influence. A leaning towards classical Greek models is more obvious in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth-century frescoes in the refectory of the Apollonia monastery, remarkable for their high level of artistic achievement (for example, the Prayer in Gethsemane). Superb wall-paintings by an unknown artist of the fourteenth century (1345-1369) are preserved on the exterior and in the interior of the church on the lake island of Maligrad at Great Prespa.
Post-Byzantine
Exploiting all the previous traditions in the grand manner, Onouphrios Neokastrites (Onufri), of Elbasan, showed himself the greatest Albanian painter of the sixteenth century. There survive of his work the iconostasis paintings in the churches of the Evangelistria and of Hagios Demetrios in Berat Castle, and the wall-paintings in Hagios Nicholaos church at Shelcan, and in the church of the Hagioi Theodoroi at Berat. This great artist was at home in the Byzantine tradition, but he also assimilated creative achievements in the Western art of his day. Onouphrios’ artistic spirit was to give rise to a school of Albanian icon-painting which we will call the “School of Berat”.
Artistic activity continued during the seventeenth century. Many churches were adorned with portable icons and wall-paintings: in the Berat region.
After the School of Berat of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, we can also speak of a “Kor衠School “, a group of icon-painters working in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, says researcher Petro Lufta.
