On February 11, 2020, as I was working through the metadata and images of the Sinai Archive at the University of Michigan in efforts to ensure concordances and accuracy in the records, I stumbled across a batch of images of icon fragments. These had little to offer in terms of visual interest, so I prepared for my work that day to be quite mundane and add little to my fascination with the Sinai material. But among the icon fragments I discovered something quite exceptional.
The image in question did not show a fragment of an icon, like the rest of the images in the group that day. Instead, it displayed a full view of the inside lid of a box with an image identified in the catalog as the Adoration of the Virgin Kyriotissa from eighteenth century Russia (fig. 1). The indentations of where the hardware once attached the lid to the box remain visible in the black and white picture, so clearly the image in the central composition once decorated the inside of the lid. I became instantly intrigued, in part because I also questioned the panel’s iconography and attribution. My background and training enabled me to see in this image something new; to recover an aspect of its past that has long been forgotten.
The painting on the inside lid of the wooden chest shows eight kneeling figures in prayer directing their attention toward the central upper portion of the composition where an image of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child in a heavenly sphere fixates their attention and that of the viewer. The image of the Virgin and Christ is not that of the Kyriotissa type—which generally shows the Virgin full-length in a standing position with the Christ Child upon her chest—but rather that of the Blachernitissa type. The iconography of the latter has roots in the icon from the Church of the Blachernai in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and generally shows the Virgin half-length and with both her hands raised to either side—in an orans gesture—and with the Christ Child upon her bosom. Christ directs his blessing toward the faithful, and the Virgin, in turn, intercedes on their behalf.
In the lower portion of the Sinai panel, the eight kneeling figures are divided into two groups: the men on the left and the women on the right. The distinct features and garments of the figures, as well as the inscriptions in Church Slavonic above their heads, helps identify them. On the left, the image displays Neagoe Basarab (d. 1521) and his three sons: Theodosius, Peter, and John. On the right is his wife, Milica Despina (d. 1554), and their daughters: Stana, Ruxandra, and Angelina. The panel preserves a unique image of this royal family.
Between 1512 and 1521, Neagoe Basarab was the ruler of Wallachia—the Romanian principality extending to the south of the Carpathian Mountains (fig. 2). In 1505, he married Milica Despina of Serbia—a descendant of the houses of Branković and Lazarević—and together they had six children. In efforts to ensure the proper education of his heirs, Neagoe penned the little-known but important text titled The Teachings of Neagoe Basarab to His Son Theodosius. This is an unparalleled speculum principum written in Church Slavonic in the Eastern Orthodox cultural sphere, contemporaneous with, yet divergent in its ideologies from, Machiavelli’s political treatise The Prince (De Principatibus, 1513; published 1532). As the oldest among the sons, Theodosius succeeded his father to the throne on September 15, 1521. Due to his young age at the time, his mother, Milica, acted as his regent. Unfortunately, Theodosius died only a few months after taking the crown, in January 1522. Little is known of Neagoe and Milica’s other two sons, Peter and John. As for the daughters, it is known that Stana married Moldavia’s prince Stephen IV (r. 1517–1527), and Ruxandra married Radu of Afumați, who took control of Wallachia after Theodosius’s death (r. 1522–1529).
During this reign, Prince Neagoe Basarab fostered relations with the monastic communities on Mount Athos—the pan-Orthodox and multinational community of Christians that served as an enduring emblem of Eastern Christianity. Basarab made monetary donations and gifted precious icons, manuscripts, embroideries, and metalwork to the Athonite monasteries. His efforts renew for those communities the objects needed for the celebration of the liturgy, and ensured his remembrance among the local monasteries. His deeds aligned with the long tradition of patronage of Athos among the rulers of the north-Danubian principalities—a tradition that began during the second half of the fourteenth century and intensified after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. This is especially evident in the Athonite patronage of Moldavia’s ruler Stephen III (r. 1457–1504), as I have demonstrated in a recent publication.
It would not be out of the question that Prince Neagoe Basarab also extended gifts to the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai—a topic worthy of further scholarly investigation. The box to which the lid in question once belonged could have carried precious icons, manuscripts, and embroideries from Wallachia to Sinai. Some may still be preserved today in the collection of the monastery and in the Sinai digital archives at Michigan and Princeton.
Upon its arrival at Sinai, those who opened the wooden chest would have first encountered the image of the Wallachian prince alongside his immediate family, shown in a gesture of prayer and supplication to the Virgin and Christ. The image displays the faith of the patron, and his hope for eventual salvation for himself, his wife, and their children. But the image was also intended to incite prayer and remembrance for the patron and his family among the monastic community at Sinai receiving his gifts. Although Basarab’s deeds have fallen into oblivion—like much of the history, art, and culture of Eastern Europe—remnants of that rich past are slowly coming into light, offering insight into the cultural contacts that extended across Europe and the Mediterranean during the medieval and early modern periods.
Further reading:
Erdeljan, Jelena. “A Note on the Ktetorship and Contribution of Women from the Brankovic Dynasty to Cross-Cultural Connections in Late Medieval and Early Modern Balkans.” Zbornik Matice srpske za likovne umetnosti 44 (2016): 61–72.
Gheorghe, Manuela E. “A Patristic Figure in Early Romanian Literature: Neagoe Basarab and His Teachings to His Son Théodosie.” Studia Patristica 48 (2010): 385–390.
Goina, Mariana. “Medieval Political Philosophy in a Sixteenth-Century Wallachian Mirror of Princes: The Teachings of Neagoe Basarab to His Son Theodosie.” The Slavonic and East European Review 92 (2014): 25–43.
Grigore, Mihai-D. Neagoe Basarab - Princeps Christianus. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015.
***Sullivan is currently completing a lengthier article on the Sinai panel, the surviving portraits of Neagoe Basarab, as well as his patronage in Wallachia and across the Eastern Orthodox world.
