Andrei Dumitrescu, who graduated from CEU in 2023 with an MA in Comparative History: Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies, is among the awardees of the ‘2023 Appreciation Prize’ granted in November by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research. The ‘Appreciation Prize’, initiated in 1990, recognizes distinguished master’s students at Austrian universities, and comes with a cash award of 3,000 euros.
Dumitrescu’s CEU master’s thesis, titled "The Visionary Emperor: Constantine the Great and the Archangel Michael in Late Fifteenth-Century Moldavian Representations", examines the role of the Archangel Michael as protector of the ideal Christian sovereign based on iconography of two churches in the Principality of Moldavia (in modern-day Romania). These icons, and in particular the scenes depicting St. Michael and Constantine the Great, were an important means for local rulers to fashion their self-representation as monarchs and negotiate power relations between church and state. By analyzing the Moldavian wall paintings, Dumitrescu's thesis advances scholarship of the iconographic cycles along with their political and cultural implications.