Situated 30 km from Suceava, Arbore Monastery was built between the 2nd of April and the 29th of August 1503, by Luca Arbore, one of Stephen the Great’s generals, in the village of Soloca, that he owned. The monument has been consecrated to the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist.
Having a rectangular plan, the church has
walls made of raw stone and vaults made of brick. Smaller than other painted
churches, Arbore has a gloomy narthex and a nave with large
windows. There is no steeple, as it was built by a landowner, and not by a
ruling prince.
It has remarkable fresco exterior and
interior paintings against a predominant green background, unlike Voroneț, where blue
predominates. The green is in five shadows and 47 hues combined with red, blue,
yellow, pink and ochre. The secret of combining colors was kept by Moldavian
master painters to their grave and is now lost in the mist of time. However,
scientists were able to identify thirty substances, including animal size,
vinegar, egg, gall and honey. Restorers cannot hope to duplicate the paint:
they can only stabilize what has been left of the frescoes.
The paintings were made by a team led by Dragos
Coman from
The two heavy slabs of stone preserved near
the church from the time it was painted have fifteen small holes which used to
serve as containers for the mixing of colors, thus providing the large display
of shades used by Moldavian painters.
In the narthex one may find the tombs of
the church founders, i.e. Luca Arbore and his wife, Iuliana.
Inside the monastery, an ethnographic museum with a rich display of
the region's most valuable assets is worth visiting.
The monastery was restored between
1909-1914 and 1936-1937, and is a UNESCO protected site.
