Cosmology and eschatology in the exonarthex of the Great Church of Hurez

This article by Anca Vasiliu, art historian and philosopher, analyzes the iconographic program of the exonarthex of the great church of the Hurez monastery in Wallachia, whose frescoes date from 1694. The study examines how this transitional architectural space articulates cosmology and eschatology through a complex iconographic program combining the Tetramorph, the Last Judgment, Genesis, and evangelical parables. The author distinguishes several image regimes — cosmic vision, theology in images, icon — and shows how their coexistence reveals an original theological thought. The main contribution of the article lies in highlighting an unprecedented encounter, at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, between the hesychast and philokalic tradition, an Aristotelianism renewed by the teaching of Corydaleus, and a modern sense of melancholy, a convergence that lends this ensemble a singular theological and spiritual significance.