"Assuption of the Mother of God" wooden church

"This holy church was built through the effort and expense of Ioil, hegumen of Bisericani, 1776 - / s - Hs - Nika. "

The "Assuption of the Mother of God" church in Vânătorii Pietrei is built of fir beams on a stone foundation, in a specific Moldavian style, with a cruciform plan, the side apses and that of the altar being slightly pronounced. The south porch and the pronaos that extends the nave of the church to the west are later additions, as is the blind spire with a bulbous cover, which still gives more suppleness and amplitude to the whole building. The gable roof in two pitches, with flared edges, is rounded at the apse of the altar and above the western extremity. All the apses have a pentagonal covering of boards on the outside, the spaces between the lateral sides and the apse of the altar closing at right angles.

Inside, the vestibule and pronaos have a flat roof, but the nave rises through an elegant semi-cylindrical longitudinal vault, which extends to the iconostasis. The lateral apses are covered in an arch and the altar is dominated by a transverse supporting vault, towards which the ribs of a sphere segment converge.

The current wooden strucure is of recent date and attracts attention through the vivacity of the colors and the expressiveness of the icons that compose it. On the other hand, the original tapestry, made together with the church in the 18th century and preserved in the Văratic Monastery Museum, is a piece of great artistic value and extraordinary beauty. Made of linden and oak wood, the old temple from Vânătorii Pietrei strictly respects the hierarchical and spatial arrangement specific to Orthodox Christian iconography, but what is striking at first sight in these paintings is the combination of different but not eclectic stylistic elements, from which resulted in a unitary assembly of certain originality. The psychology of the biblical characters emanates a certain Byzantine hieratism, the chromaticism used has that specific Renaissance inner glow, and the frequency of locally inspired secondary plans insistently refers to the frescoes from Voroneţ and Suceviţa.

The wooden Church of the "Assuption of the Mother of God" in Piatra-Neamț is listed as a historical monument. The assembly has the code NT-II-a-B-10559 and consists of the following components:

- The "Assuption of the Mother of God" wooden church (code LMI NT-II-m-B-10559.01)

- Bell tower (LMI code NT-II-m-B-10559.01)