From the plastic work

of the painter Constantin Nica

              "The Mother of God with the baby Jesus" (oil icon on plywood, year not specified)

In the visual work of Constantin Nica (1952, Vărăşti – 2014, Bucharest), along with portraiture and landscape painting, a not negligible place is occupied by painting of sacred inspiration, to which he dedicated himself in the last part of his life and creation. These paintings can be classified into two categories of the genre. Some are icons, and others are compositions that illustrate well-known biblical subjects related to the life of Jesus. In icons as in compositional paintings, the painter goes beyond the canons of Byzantine iconographic art and gives the represented subjects his personal vision and the plastic forms of Renaissance art. The Mother of God, Jesus as a baby or as an adult, the archangels Michael and Gabriel in his paintings come out of the traditional patterns. The painter breathes new life into them and brings them close to our sensibility. Grigorescu and Tattarescu or the Frenchman William-Adolphe Bougoureau, all great painters of the XIX century. Through the chromaticism in which the expertly dosed golden tones predominate, through the compositional balance, through the classical line of the drawing, through the hieratic and yet very human representation of physiognomy, mimicry and bodily attitude, "The Mother of God with the baby Jesus" is a model of how it should be to be approached the genre painting even nowadays. It is about the Raphaelite iconographic model, which Mihai Eminescu himself recommended to the painters of his time, as an alternative to the schematizing and outdated model of iconography of the Byzantine tradition or to the icons imported from Russia. (Daniel Dragomirescu)