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Altini, Eustatie
(b Zagora, Greece, c. 1772; d Iasi, 1815). Romanian painter. He studied from 1789 at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna under Heinrich Füger, Johann Baptist Lampi (i) and Hubert Maurer (1738–1818). The classicism of his academic studies was tempered by the influence of the complex Viennese pictorial culture. His first known achievement in the field of religious painting was the iconostasis (1802) of the Banu Church in Iasi, commissioned by Metropolitan Iacov Stamati (1748–1803), a prelate with illuminist cultural views. He also painted the iconostasis (1805) of the episcopal church in Roman and that of St Spiridon Church (1813) in Iasi, where his talent reached full maturity. Altini sometimes individualized the faces of the sacred personages, especially the prophets, to whom he gave portrait features, while in his compositions he utilized Western engravings. The figures in some of his royal icons are sensitively represented against a landscape background. Through his pupils and imitators Altini propagated classicism in religious painting in Moldavia. Long after his death church painters were obliged by their contracts to reproduce his icons. His portrait painting is less well known, but it included portraits of Scarlat Callimachi (c. 1812–15; Iasi, Metropolitan Palace), the prince of Moldavia between 1812 and 1818, and of women in elegant court costumes (e.g. Safta Costachi Talpan and a second portrait of an anonymous sitter, Bucharest, Mus. A.). He also painted the Admission of Metropolitan Veniamin Costachi into Monachism (1813; Neamt Monastery, Mus.) in a Romantic spirit.
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