Pictura murală a bisericii Doamnei - Bucureşti - o nouă restituire a ansamblului iconografic

Abstract

This short publication dedicated to the mural painting of the Church of the Lady in Bucharest documents one of the most important recent conservation–restoration interventions on a 17th-century Brâncovenesc iconographic ensemble. Founded in 1683 by Lady Maria Cantacuzino, the church today represents a landmark of Bucharest’s medieval art, preserving, despite successive transformations, a pictorial core of remarkable historical and artistic value.

The study traces the evolution of the monument and its mural decoration through centuries of interventions, deterioration, and aesthetic reinterpretations, from the hammering and overpainting of the 19th century to the interwar restorations and those carried out in the second half of the 20th century. Within this context, the present intervention succeeds in recovering, on the basis of a rigorous methodology and interdisciplinary research, the coherence of the original iconographic program attributed to the painters Constantinos and Ioan.

The work highlights not only the technical dimension of the restoration—consolidation, cleaning, conservation treatments, and chromatic reintegration—but also the ethical principles that guided the intervention: respect for authenticity, reversibility, material compatibility, and the preservation of the monument’s historical traces. At the same time, the specific difficulties of such a site are presented, from structural deterioration to the challenges of visual reading posed by a historically layered ensemble. The result is a critical and balanced restitution of one of the oldest and most valuable mural paintings in Bucharest, as well as a reflection on how heritage is reconstructed through science, rigor, and interdisciplinary collaboration.