BULGARIAN ICONS...
(image links)

...have millennial history. Under the reign of Tzar Boris 1, in 865, Bulgaria was the first of all Slav nations to adopt Christianity from Byzantium as its official religion. Since then the icon, venerated as an especially sacred object of cult and rite, has developed as a fundamental part of the Bulgarian art from the ninth century through the present days.

The First Bulgarian Kingdom extended its valuable contribution to the artistic achievements of Christian Orthodox culture by producing the oldest known Bulgarian icons, made of glazed ceramic tiles.

The Second Bulgarian Kingdom left its lucent mark with the works of the Tarnovo School of painting.

In 1393, Bulgaria was invaded by the turks and became a part of the Ottoman Empire for the period of nearly five centuries till 1878. Over those years of alien religious domination, the Bulgarian Icon proved to be a unique symbol of hope and dream which helped these small nation to survive.

The eighteenth century marked the beginning of the Bulgarian Renaissance period through which the strictly didactic and rigidly canonized painting had been transformed into life-asserting art. Towns like Bansko, Tryavna and Samokov were to bring up several generations of icon painters with a distinct style of their own. Those artists had left their deep mark in the overall development of Christian Orthodox Art.

Their trail can be seen in the monasteries of Mount Athos and the south-west Balkans, or in Wallachia, Moldavia and Russia, whose icon masters had followed the Bulgarian canonical pattern.

An outstanding achievement of a small, but gifted nation, of its refined sensibility and artistic taste, the Bulgarian Icon occupies a well-deserved place in the cultural history of Europe and the world.

page edited:
17th Dec 1999