Moldovița Monastery
The fresco from the monastery wall, brought down to thirty-eight millimetres.
- Level
- Premium
- Diameter
- 38 mm
- Calibre
- Sellita SW-200Swiss automatic calibre
- Dial
- Dial worked by hand
- Case
- Sapphire crystal
- Strap
- Handmade
- Price
- Set individually, in direct conversation with the watch designer.
The workshop takes on a small number of commissions each year.
The story on the dial
Eight churches in northern Moldavia have their exterior walls entirely covered with fresco. They have been on the World Heritage list since 1993, and the reason given then is that the painting is not decoration on a facade: it covers all surfaces systematically and unfolds complete religious cycles, from one end of the wall to the other.
At Moldovița, on the pillars of the west porch, the Tree of Jesse unfolds in twelve scenes.
A wall fresco is measured in metres. On a dial of thirty-eight millimetres it is measured in tenths. The problem is not the reduction, but the colour: a pigment that looks right on a large surface changes when it is applied to an area a hundred times smaller, because light behaves differently on it.
The trials are repeated until the colour on silver resembles the one on the wall. Not identical, but similar. Identical is not possible.
Sources for this text: UNESCO, Churches of Moldavia, cIMeC, mural painting in the UNESCO heritage.
