Icons from the Orthodox Communities of Albania - Collection of the National Museum of Medieval Art, Korce

In English. Soft cover, 29x25 cm, 208 pp., ill.; net weight 1170 gr.

Presents icons from the central and southern, preeminently Eastern Orthodox regions, of Albania that cover a chronological span of six centuries, from the 14th to the 19th, offering a panorama of the religious painting that developed in these areas. The icons of the 14th-15th century are mainly from the area of Korcë (Korytsa, Northern Epirus), from the hermit's retreats at Great Prespa lake. A distinctive kind of monasticism developed there at this period and retreats were built in inaccessible caves on the lakeside. Many of these retreats are still preserved in both the Greek and the Albanian sections of the lake. The icons, and also the wall-paintings that adorn them, are ascribed to the activity of workshops at Kastoria and Ohrid, and some of them reflect the Palaeologan art of Constantinople. After the conquest of the state of tsar Samuel by the emperor Basil II, the autocephalous Archdiocese of Ohrid was founded in 1019/20 A.D., centred initially on Prespa and later on Ohrid. In byzantine times, it was an advanced outpost of imperial diplomacy in the Slav world, and its spiritual leaders were men of learning who were sent here from Constantinople. The provenance of the post-byzantine icons in the exhibition covers a wide geographical range, the northernmost boundary of which is Tirana. They attest to the continuity of the Byzantine tradition in the religious painting of the Balkans after the establishment here of the Ottoman Turks, with Orthodox Christianity serving as an element unifying the subjugated peoples. They also reveal the ease with which painting trends and schools were disseminated, and the mobility and travels of painters within the vast area of the Ottoman empire. They emphasise the authority and prestige throughout the Orthodox world of Mount Athos, with some of the icon painters working at the monasteries there, and also the wide circulation of cretan icons, some of which travelled as far as the Balkan hinterland. The greek inscriptions on the icons, some of them very long, provided valuable factual and prosopographical evidence and emphasise the power of the greek language (the language of the Church and scholarship) amongst painters, commissioners, and recipients of icons, irrespective of their nationality. [...] (Anastasia Tourta, Director of the Museum of Byzantine Culture).