An Ornate Book Written in the Guard Room of the Muse Clio (review of Ioan Bizău, Tradiție și continuitate artistică la Nicula. Contribuția călugărului Ilarion Mureșan (Tradition and artistic continuity at Nicula. The contribution of the monk Ilarion Mureșan) (Cluj-Napoca: Renașterea, 2020)
Ilie GHERHEȘ
The craft of icon painting/painting on glass began in the mid 18th century in Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia and Galicia. Little by little, this folk art also reached Transylvania, where it was grafted onto an ancestral and mystical superstitious background.
In our ethno cultural and historic al space, the icon was promoted, especially, through the peasant school of painting from Nicula. The fate of the icon called “Hodighitria” acquired unsuspected valences of spread, especially after the miracle of its shedding of tears was performed at the b eginning of 1699.