Details:These leaves are from a lectionary (a book of gospel readings used in church services) that was presented to the Holy Trinity Monastery at Chalke in Constantinople by the Empress Katherine Komnene in 1063. The tools of the scribe's trade are laid out before the evangelists: a stylus (a...
Please Subscribe or Donate to Help Keep This Site Free! Longinus (/ˌlɒnˈdʒaɪnəs/) is the name given to the unnamed Roman soldier who pierced the side of Jesus with a lance and who in medieval and some modern Christian traditions is described as a convert to Christianity. His name first appeared...
Please Subscribe or Donate to Help Keep This Site Free! In a composition borrowed from imperial Byzantine art, Mary is shown seated on a jeweled throne with the Christ child and flanked by archangels Michael and Gabriel. Above, Christ appears in a radiant light supported by two angels. Portraits of...
Please Subscribe or Donate to Help Keep This Site Free! This is the oldest known icon of Christ Pantocrator, encaustic on panel (Saint Catherine's Monastery). The two different facial expressions on either side may emphasize Christ's two natures as fully God and fully human. This wooden panel, painted in encaustic,...
Please Subscribe or Donate to Help Keep This Site Free! Christ the Redeemer is an icon discovered by accident in a dilapidated woodshed near Zvenigorod in 1919. With several other icons stored nearby, it was attributed as the work of the great Andrei Rublev, painted for one of Zvenigorod cathedrals...
Please Subscribe or Donate to Help Keep This Site Free! In Christian iconography, Christ Pantocrator is a specific depiction of Christ. Pantocrator or Pantokrator, usually translated as "Almighty" or "all-powerful", is derived from one of many names of God in Judaism. The Pantokrator, largely an Eastern Orthodox or Eastern Catholic...
According to apocryphal Christian tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the canonical gospels. In writing, Anne's name and that of her husband Joachim come only from the Protoevangelium of James. The Protoevangelium is a 2nd-century infancy...
This type of icon is known as the Virgin Eleousa (Virgin of Tenderness) characterized by the touching cheeks of mother and child in a loving moment. The icon signifies Christ’s incarnation, suffering, and death for the sake of humankind. Three ornamental stars on the Virgin’s cloak are traditional...
This Bible was written and illuminated in the Armenian quarter of Isfahan, the capital of Persia (present-day Iran) in the 1600s. The artists Malnazar and Aghap'ir lavishly decorated this book with scenes from the Old Testament, such as the Creation of the World, and portraits of the four evangelists, Matthew,...
This painting and the Enthroned Madonna and Child are the oldest paintings on the National Gallery of Art’s walls. They may have been created by the same anonymous artist in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), then the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Panels such as these were highly influential in...
The composition of this Virgin and Child is loosely based on the Hodegetria, one of the more powerful and enduring icon types of the Orthodox Christian church. The Virgin gestures toward the child to show him as the “way” (hodos in Greek), the source of salvation. The throne and her...
