St. John the Baptist
Type:
Icon
Period:
The end of the
18 century
Toma Vishanov-Molera, born around 1750, painter of icons and murals, founder of the Bansko school of art. He grew up in the family of the clergyman Vishan. Around 1765 he went to Vienna, where he studied painting. It is not known who were his teachers there or when he returned to Bansko. His fellow villagers called him the Moler, Molera(from German Maler ‘painter’), whence the entire family's surname. Under the influence of the European 18th century art Toma Vishanov painted his works in a new manner, unknown until then in Orthodox art. The figures are realistic, vivid, expressive. Toma Vishanov is an innovator in the early period of Bulgarian Renaissance. His ideas on art were not understood and at first were rejected by his contemporaries. His work has not been studied extensively. He died after 1811 in Bansko.
Dimmensions (cm):
84.5
/ 51
/ 2.5
Location
Country: Bulgaria
Province: Blagoevgrad
Town: Dobrinishte
Church: St. Peter and St. Paul
Source
Country: Bulgaria
Province: Blagoevgrad
Town: Dobrinishte
Church: St. Peter and St. Paul
Description
John the Baptist is portrayed to the waist and full face. His right arm is bent in front of the breast. In his left hand he is holding a slightly inclined cross with a long upright beam, cutting across almost the entire vertical plane of the pictorial field. Painted around the cross is a narrow unfolded roll with a single-line text. Flung over the wrist of his left hand is another, bigger unfolded roll.
Iconographical technique: Semi-oil
A semi-oil painting, made in the typical of that technique manner. The basic tones had been laid thinly, but overlayingly. The overpaintings in the garments are executed in more pastoso manner, with visible traces, left by the brush, in the lighted parts of the icon. The carnations are executed more finely, with a minimum applying of the paint and with shaded transitions. The aureole of St. John the Baptist is gilded with an inferior-quality gold. The background is painted in bluish-green, evenly, with slight a brightening in the icon's lower half. The varnish cover is applied thinly and evenly.
Base material: Wood
The base is a softwood panel, hand-made, reinforced in the middle by means of an inserted beam. Placed in its upper and lower ends are one beam each in specially made rabbets. Pasted between it and the ground coat is a special kind of fibrillated paper. The ground coat is of chalk, about 1 mm thick.
State, restoration traces and comments
There are no traces of any previous restoration work.
