In recent years sacred art has regained importance in Italy, especially thanks to the active backing of the Italian Episcopal Conference, and the open-mindedness in this direction that certain Italian Academies of Fine Arts, also numbering the historical Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, in Milan, have created by adding a course on sacred art.

The exhibition “Icons from Albanian museums” held in the Palazzo Montanari Galleries in Vicenza, promoted by IntesaBci and sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, and the Albanian Republic’s Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, belongs in this context. The exhibition is part of a larger project, which was inaugurated a few years ago and which also comprised the realization of “Art and the Sacred Mystery” in 2000 and “Daily Treasures” in 2001. Hence a detailed study of the art and artistic culture of the near East, especially its Adriatic regions, in other words ancient Roman and Byzantine regions, which correspond to the present Albanian territory.


The exhibition in Vicenza holds a vast collection of icons, which thus increases knowledge and appreciation for a style of painting that developed in the medieval period – it is worth mentioning that the Byzantine Schism took place in 1054 – and reached moments of great significance in the 16th and 18th centuries. Icon, from the Greek word eikon, which means image, means and specifies a portable painting with a holy subject, painted on wood, in Eastern and Byzantine areas. The most ancient icons date back to the 5th century, to the very beginning of the medieval period. Their production then continued in Eastern regions and especially in Russia, till the 18th century. From the 12th century Italian made use of the term Ancona, which always means image, but specifies a painting on wood.

As such it is also a synonym of pala, altarpiece, and this is how Cennini called it at the end of the 14th century. Icons distinguish the orthodox liturgy’s form of worship and devotion, the very same liturgy that is still celebrated today in Serbia, in certain Albanian, Russian and Greek areas and generally in the Christian East, which called itself “orthodox” after the 1054 schism. Icons are not related with the divine because they represent the sacred, that is the saints, the Virgin, Christ the Pantocrator, but because they mystically bind the divine and the human. These icons from Albanian museums express the strong and stern devotion of those populations subject to Orthodoxy, they highlight the rich spiritual heritage of those people and explain in detail the so-called corridor region’s history during certain centuries.

The Apostles, St. Nicholas, the Virgin Mary, the archangel Gabriel, St. Mark, St. Anthony the abbot, St. George, St. Theodore, St. Demetrius, St. Gregory of Nazianzus and hundred others can be recognized. Icons are the expression of the culture carried from Byzantium to those territories that were under the rule of the Eastern Empire, also influencing this borderline land where sacred art prevails. This culture keeps its mark alive even after the Turkish-Ottoman conquest. Sacred Byzantine art remains rich and visible especially in the extremely beautiful mosaics. Icons instead entirely reveal the devotion of an area that was divided by the Roman Empire, and was given importance by Venice’s presence in that space between commercial and economic reasons and the sacred nature of grace, to which the transcendental is revealed. Extraordinary paintings, with gold backgrounds and brilliant colours, which do not only reveal this land’s cultural progress through the centuries but also awake unique and hard to describe emotions.

The number of 14th century icons is small while the 16th - 17th century group is larger. The style of this typical painting can be noticed in its gentle tones, the harmony of colours, refined details, the expressions on holy faces and I would almost say in their seraphic physiognomy. After the fall of Constantinople certain artists, who produced such masterpieces, moved also to the Italian coast, especially to Apulia. Evidence of this are those “God’s caves” frescoed by monks and artists of the time. And one of the greatest names related to icons cannot pass unnoticed - Onufri, a painter who worked in Berat and was also in Venice in the 16th century. In his work there persist late Byzantine influences, accents of the school of Crete and typical gothic elements. A school of students formed around Onufri, and the most beautiful works that have reached us and are today preserved in the Museum Onufri in Berat, must be traced back to them – paintings on wood, pages of beauty and splendour and also of faith and history. traslated by Interpres