Sucevita Monastery – Masterpiece of Bucovina

By
Catalina

July 4, 2019

This post is also available in: Română

Type	Monastery
Year	1584
Architectural Style:	Byzantine, Gothic
Getting there	Car – from Radauti (18 km) There are daily buses between Radauti and Sucevita. The closest airports are located in Suceava (SCV) – www.aeroportsuceava.ro Iasi (IAS) – www.aeroport.ro.
When to visit	Every Day, Day time
Location	Sucevita, Suceava County, Romania

Sucevita Monastery

The monastery resembles a fortified medieval fortress.

Sucevita monastery has been inscribed by UNESCO on its list of World Heritage Sites, as one of the Painted Churches of Moldavia.

The church also has a tower with a star-shaped base, this being a symbol of the fact that the church had been built by a reigning family, and not by an ordinary man.

In the tombroom are buried Ieremia and Simion Movila brothers

Frescoes of the monastery

The most outstanding paintings are the Ladder of Virtue, presenting the angels who assist the righteous enter the Paradise, while sinners are punished by a grinning demon, and the Last Judgement, left unfinished because its painter fell down from the scaffoldings and died.

Outside the porch, is to be seen the terrible vision of the Apocalypse, displaying two-headed Beasts and the traditional rivers of fire.

On the south wall, there is a Tree of Jesse, displaying both the human origin of Jesus, under the form of His family tree, and His divine ascendence, as the Prayers to Holy Virgin scene is also painted nearby.

The largest of all Moldavian wall paintings are also found here, the Prayer of all Saints, covering seven registers equivalent to the entire height of the Eastern facade with detailed religious hierarchies done with vivid colors, almost perfectly preserved over time.

Sucevita Monastery frescoes are among the best-preserved examples of all sites of Moldavian paintings and were made at the beginning of Ieremia Movila’s reign, between 1595 and 1596.

The frescoes are in brilliant reds and blues against a ground of emerald green and must have been magnificent when freshly painted.

Museum of the Sucevita Monastery

The cells are bordered by the eastern wall, and there is also a museum with embroidery, manuscripts, religious objects, and icons inside the cult.

The largest and most precious collection of medieval art in Moldova can be found at the museum of the Sucevita Monastery. We mention some valuable adornments: the roofs of the rulers of Ieremia (1606) and Simion Movilă (1609), the masterpieces of embroidery, among the most successful secular portraits of the time: the 10,000 pearl epitaph (1597) Mrs. Elizabeth, the wife of Ieremia Movila. All these include objects representative of medieval art from the 15th and 16th centuries, combined with religious, monastic, painting, wood and stone sculpture, embroidery, miniature manuscripts, and silverware.

On the east side of the enclosure, located on the former boardroom, there is a collection of embroidery from the time of Jeremiah and Simion Movila, made of gold, silver, silk, and pearls. The portraits of the two are displayed in the same room alongside other exhibits, such as an epitaph with pearls, tetraevanghelia, locked in gilded silver, an ark given by Metropolitan Gheorghe Movila.