Featured Russian silver icon

Please do, I think it would be very interesting. Many members are used to using translation apps and sites. People who are searching for info on icons visit the forum too, it could be useful to them as well.

 

Here is the pdf about faked icons using the electrolysis proceed which is the most dangerous for flat things like oklads, it makes a perfect repro of the original, but it's always the same item duplicated, then it's very important to have pictures from the faked itms founds.

 

Thank you for the link, @Lecollectionneur . Very clear and concise information.

 

Here's an example of one with & without the oklad:

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-...tm_source=house&utm_content=evergageart092318

 

Interesting link, if you look closely, the head seems to be glued on the body with the St Nicolae, and normally it's not written in latin, the body is paintly very naive too ???

 

The fact that the icon is Romanian, and the riza/oklad Russian, makes me wonder which came first.
Maybe the icon was painted to fit the oklad? And the Russian oklad engraved with latin script after it came to Romania?

 

The oklad has hallmarks in "Löthige" which is typically german or austro-hungarian, and normally before 1870, 12 Löthige are most offen found on 18thcentury silersmithing works during the wars, as I said it's interesting to have time for searching all about the period which correspond to the time possible with the painting and writing.
They are not a lot of orthodox in Europa at this time outside Greece and Russia and I have not a lot of documentation about that.

 

But Romanian is a Romance language, so Latin would make as much sense there as Russian in Russia, Greek in Greece.

 

Perhaps indicating that painter knew before starting that icon was to have an oklad?

 

Russia denotes finenesses in zolotniki, which is different from the Loth system.
It could have been marked upon entry in Romania, possibly Transsylvania, which was Austro-Hungarian at the time.
Transsylvania had a very mixed population, and several religions, including Eastern Orthodox. There were icons there, but those were mostly traditional Transsylvanian reverse painted glass. This icon would have been a rarity.
Transsylvania also uses Latin script.

I think it is also possible that the icon is neither Romanian (Transsylvanian) nor Russian.

 

I am just reading a book called "The Raphael Trail" by Joanna Pitman which outlines the life and times of the amazing Renaissance painter. His painting "St George and the Dragon", which became a world famous and definitive artwork for this legend, also shows a rather small dragon, less than the size of the horse.

Maybe dragons have become bigger in the 21century due to progressively healthier diet?

 

The problem is the period when the oklad does have been made, if you look about hallmarks, rumania doesn’t exist as now,austrian, osmanich, transsylvanian, a lot of goverments before mid XIXth century(1860-…), it was always part of another country before, difficult to say something precise without knowing the date, and for the glass reverse painting, it is more traditionnal that tempera, a lot of questions about this work.

 

I was only mentioning a reason Latin might not be surprising on this particular icon, a response to:

I don't do geography. No matter the name of the region, if the people there spoke what is now known as Romanian, maybe Latin isn't surprising on an icon that was owned there.

 

Precisely, at the time when the icon can be painted referring to the hallmarks, the "national" language can be a lot of things, romanian(moldo-valachian) was for the small people, it's only at the beginning of the 19th century with the independence movements than latin language, especially french become more used, before the people was mostly serfs(not be sure with the translation).
The catholic were more presents at this time than orthodoxes, called "gréco-catholiques", but we are cutting hairs in four like we said in french.