Collectively, the portraits seem to form a comprehensive private gallery of portraits that is engages in a lively debate with the history of art. As wood-based paintings, they hark back to the act of painting and to its meaning within systems of commemoration, sanctity, and belief. In classical Greece, the imposing building containing pictures which formed the left wing of the Propylaea on the Acropolis at Athens, Greece, was known as the Pinacotheca – from the Greek words pínax (painting), and thíki (wooden board) – in self-explanatory testament to the exhibits within. Over the years, however, the term became synonymous with museum.

The painting of portraits on wooden panels has been common throughout history, in various contexts. Between the first and third century CE, residents of the town of Fayum in Egypt (under Roman rule) painted the portraits of the deceased on panels, which they laid on top of the mummified individuals, to commemorate them. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, religious icons and altarpiece paintings were also produced on wooden panels. Combining honoring of the saints with ritual and religious devotion, many of them bear references to the kerchief of Saint Veronica, whose name is a portmanteau of vera (truth), and ikon (image): used to wipe the sweat from Jesus’s brow to ease his torment, his facial features remained on the white cloth.

Both in the Fayum paintings and in the Christian icons, the wooden support was concealed behind layer upon layer of paint, varnish, and occasionally gold leaf, to create the illusion of something immaculate and imbue the painted figure with nonhuman immortal life. In contrast, Balaklav’s portraits do quite the opposite: with a touching gentleness, he paints them on a surface that has clearly been subject to the ravages of time, thereby also underscoring the vulnerable, deficient, and fleeting nature of the depicted figures.

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