Touristic informations
SUCEVIŢA MONASTERY.
Surrounded
by gentle mountain scenery, Sucevita appears like a strong stone
citadel, with massive towers, buttresses and watch roads. The walls of
Sucevita dating since the 16th century enclose within them legends and
tales such as the one of the woman who it seems for 30 years carried in
her ox wagon, the stone the monastery was built of. In memory of
the woman who toiled for three decades, the head of a woman is carved
in black stone, half concealed under the arch of a buttress. Here too
another legend is connected with a human sacrifice: the artisan, who
was painting it, fell off the scaffolding while he was working in the
Western wall and died. The wall was left without any beautiful frescoes.
Sucevita is the monument with the greatest number of
images. It is populated inside and outside with thousands of portraits
and images. From top to bottom, the walls seem to be painted with drops
of sky, sunshine, dew and violet dusk with mother-of-pearl radiance,
all against a green as intense as the bed of a sea, or as green as a
lawn after the rain.
The Northern wall displays a monumental composition.
"The Scale of Virtues", wonderfully well preserved, with scenes
symbolizing the people's belief in the first judgment of souls after
death.
On the Southern wall there is again "Jesse's Tree"
—the symbol of the continuity between the Old and the New Testament,
painted against a' dark blue background, in an inter weaving of
medallions and delicate winding stones which grow from the body of
Jesse who is seen lying asleep, one hand under his head. Next there is
the frieze of the scholars and philosophers of the antiquity
(Pythagoras, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Solon) gorgeously clad in
Byzantine cloaks — Plato is carrying a small coffin with bones on his
head — the symbol of meditation on man's life and death. The "Prayer to
the Virgin" with numerous scenes and personages wearing oriental dress,
horses in motion, citadels and buildings in Italian style. The "Pocrov"
(The Veil) — another brilliant image representing the Virgin Mary as a
Byzantine empress under a large red veil held by angels. Around the
apse the composition "Cinul" (Hank), a suite of all the heavenly and
wordly hierarchies - (seraphs, angels, prophets, apostles, bishops,
martyrs) all painted in sober colors in which the saturated green
background is emphasized by the red of the clothes, the ochre of the
faces and the gold of the haloes.
The painting in Sucevita is of perfect
monumentality, in keeping with the architecture of the church; the
painted stories and the background in which they develop present a rare
chromatic harmony, of oriental brilliance as in images from the
"Arabian Nights”.
Touristic Sights in
Bucovina: Arbore Church,
Bălineşti Church, Cacica,
Ciprian Porumbescu,
Câmpulung
Moldovenesc, Dragomirna Monastery, Fălticeni, Humor Monastery, Moldoviţa
Monastery, Marginea,
Pătrăuţi Church,
Probota Monastery,
Putna Monastery,
Râşca
Monastery, Rădăuţi,
Suceviţa Monastery, Solca ,Siret, Slatina Monastery,
Suceava, Vatra Dornei, Voroneţ Monastery.
