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GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE RENAISSANCE ARTISTIC ORNAMENTATION OF THE ROMANIAN COUNTRIES IN THE XV-XVII CENTURY

M. Pop, C. Hostiuc, D. Horatau

Abstract

The Renaissance is a pinnacle of European humanistic culture that can only be erased from human history at the risk of destroying the very meaning of history. Of the same evidence, however, is the fact that the rinascita was due to a series of political, cultural and social conditions that, emerging from the Italian land, were different in all countries where it was propagated, and almost absent, appearing in short, decorativ spurts, in others. What united them in the most concrete way was the generous idea of humanism, respect or recovery of man in his capacity as a measure of all things. Whether we are talking about the Voivodeship of Transylvania, Moldavia or Wallachia, these Roman provinces timidly felt the influence of the Florentine Renaissance during its development, but a lot stronger much later, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Transylvania, being under Habsburg or Hungarian domination, was the first to take over the innovative cultural elements, through Catholic monks and bishops, since the 15th century, and the humanist spirit led to an effervescence in the modernization of social life. Numerous cult and civil constructions appeared after 1330 in Wallachia and after 1359 in Moldavia, at the same time as the development of cities. But the elements of the Italian Renaissance were later taken over by craftsmen brought from Transylvania and Italy. The work presents examples of Renaissance ornamentation in secular and cult architectural sculpture, Renaissance elements of decorations in the applied arts of the time, as a result of a general bibliographic study that is the basis for an in situ exploratory research on Renaissance ornamentation in Romanian countries.

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