Stephen the Great, the Prince (in Romanian Domnitor) of Moldavia from 1457 until his death in 1504, fought 36 battles against the Ottoman Empire, winning 34 of them.

He commissioned artists to cover the interiors and exteriors with elaborate frescoes (portraits of saints and prophets, scenes from the life of Jesus).

The best preserved are the monasteries in the towns of Sucevița, Moldovița, Voroneț, Humor, Suceava, Pătrăuți, Arbore and Probota.

The predominantly yellow-and-blue paintings on its exterior represent recurring themes in Christian Orthodox art: a procession of saints leads up to the Virgin enthroned with the Child in her lap, above the narrow east window; the "Tree of Jesse" springs from a recumbent Jesse at the foot of the wall to marshal the ancestry of Christ around the Holy Family; The "Siege of Constantinople" commemorates the intervention of the Virgin in saving the city of Constantinople from Persian attack in A.D. 626 (although the siege depicted is rather the Fall of Constantinople in 1453).

Moldovița and Humor are the last churches built with an open porch, a hidden place above the burial-vault, and with Gothic-style windows and doors.