The idea: to make portraits of great artistic merit in the spirit of Renaissance, of our contemporaries, people engaged in intellectual activities.
How was the idea conceived: there is a beautiful view from the window of my place of work. A part of the National Library, the garden belonging to it, some buildings and in the distance – the impressive Balkan mountains can be seen. Most of the people who visit me on one or another occasion, sit down with their back to the window, which takes up the whole northern wall and their silhouettes are outlined against this view. As a setting this reminded me not only once of the magnificent portrait of Federico da Montefeltro, the duke of Urbino, painted in 1465-66 by the great Renaissance artist Piero de la Francesca. I had the impression that this context seemed to express the best of the very human being. I shared my observations with Alexander Valchev, and it turned out that he had also had similar impressions and associations. That is how the idea of the present project was conceived.

Realization of the idea: after we saw a great number of Renaissance portraits, we decided that it was a good idea to introduce several criteria on the selection of models. They should be people engaged in intellectual work, should have inner potential, and as far as it is possible, physical resemblance with a certain Renaissance person. The main and not an easy task of the author was to express the spiritual nature of the portrayed person, to catch and convey such depth, inner beauty and dignity, which are a distinctive feature of the Renaissance portraits. In order to achieve this goal, the suitable character was put in typical background reproducing as exactly as possible the posture, atmosphere and setting from a portrait – prototype.
In technical respect, the so created “neo-Renaissance” portraits are large-format digital colored prints.
The message: each ordinary person might look with dignity. If the person wants that and makes minimum efforts. People nowadays are not much more different than those who lived 500 years ago. Portraits serve as evidence of that. Maybe people have only lost their own calmness and faith of the Renaissance man that he is the most perfect creation of God.

Stefania Yanakieva
Curator

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*reminiscence – (лат. reminiscentia) – reverberation of somebody else’s work in poetry, music, fine arts, etc.