The damned of the Last Judgment or what the Romanians paint in the Orthodox icons (historical and contemporary cultural contexts)

The article describes manners in which history and culture influenced the details of the iconographic canon in the art of Orthodox church. The author was interested in relations existing between beliefs and their iconographic representation. Changes of the imagery of the damned in historical context portrayed in the Last Judgment icons painted in selected Orthodox churches in Romania came under the investigation of the author. Romanian icon painters using Byzantine characteristics of representation introduced some significant modifications into the canon. We can divide icons of the Last Judgment into two groups – on the one hand we see sinners who rebelled against the moral canon of Christianity, on the other there are some nations unknown to Romanians, foreign people of various nationalities and faiths that can be grouped into a few categories. The largest of them is composed of pagans (Turks, Tartars and Arabs), infidels (Jews) and heretics (Armenians and Latin rite Catholics). With time this tradition turned into customary painting of the Last Judgment icons in Romania. It disappeared in the 20th century, only to be reborn with the fall of the communist era in new historical contexts. Old enemies of the Orthodox were replaced by new ones, the representatives of the greatest totalitarian systems in the 20th century - fascists, Nazis, communists; terrorists - the Muslims and their leader (Bin Laden) as well as contemporary Romanian politicians, who are being eternalized in the Last Judgment icons on the walls of Orthodox churches.