ICONS IN BULGARIA luxury large format catalogue

ISBN 954-500-040-6
Author: Teofana Matakieva
Printed in: Czech Republic 2001, 2nd edition
Pages: 256 p., hard cover, large size 25 x 33 cm/9.7''x12.9''
Language: Text in English
Photos: 117 full-page color illustrations

This edition introduces 100 icons from the National History Museum collection, dated between 9th and 19th centuries. These icons are the top achievement of the Bulgarian iconography. More than a half of them are published for the first time.

Each icon is illustrated with a full- page photo, description and explanations provided by the author. The book also contains an introduction of 15 pages about the Bulgarian Christian arts and a short chapter on the icon painting techniques.

The Bulgarian Icon Painting art has left its deep mark in the overall development of the Christian Orthodox Art. Its trace can be found in the monasteries of Mount Athos and the South Western Balkans, or in Wallachia, Moldavia and Russia, whose icon masters have followed the Bulgarian canonical patterns. An outstanding achievement of a small but extremely gifted nation characterized by a refined sensibility and artistic taste, the Bulgarian icon occupies a well-deserved place in the cultural history of Europe.

BULGARIANS have millennial history. Under the reign of tsar Boris I, in 865, Bulgaria was the first of all Slav peoples to adopt hristianity from Byzantium as its official religion. Since then the icon, venerated as an essentially sacred object of cult and rite, has developed as a fundamental part of the Bulgarian art from the 9th century through the present day.