DOI Artikel:
Smorąg Różycka, Małgorzata: ‘She begged the child: Let me embrace thee, Lord!’ A Byzantine icon with the Virgin Eleousa in the Poor Clares Convent in Cracow
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.44936#0013
12
7. The Virgin Eleousa, second half of the 15th c., circle of Andreas
Ritzos. Photo: after N. Chatzidakis, Ikonen - die Sammlung Velime-
zis, Athens, 2001
iconographie motifs, with simultaneously expanding the
narrative Marian and Christological cycles. A new canon
of human figure appeared - with monumental propor-
tions and expressively modelled garments, amply folded
or picturesquely draped. Physiognomic types changed as
well: the former ascetic and serious appearances were re-
placed by more serene types, with softly modelled facial
features. The palette became simpler but markedly bright-
er, with a predominance of bright blue and green as well
as amethyst violet. The richness of their various hues can
be best appreciated in the tonal modelling of garments
and in the landscapes.
Similar features can be seen in the faces of the Virgin
and the Christ Child in the painting under discussion.
The oval, softly modelled outlines of Mary’s face, with
ochre-yellow underpainting of flesh colours and delicate
highlights in the form of minute lines along the lower
eyelid, above the upper lip and in the dimple of the chin
were standard features of painterly modelling at that time.
Particularly notable is also the painterly manner of ren-
dering the shape of the narrow nose, with its rounded tip
highlighted in white by means of a delicate oval patch. The
painter masterfully combined cold and warm hues in or-
der to achieve the natural warmth of the flesh colour.
The same Palaiologan attributes can be seen in the face
of the Christ Child, with its markedly rounded cheeks,
large eyes and short, as if upturned, nose.
At the present, preliminary stage of research it would
be difficult to indicate works of art comparable to the
Cracow icon, but many of its characteristics suggest the
works stylistic affinities with the painting of the Palaiolo-
gan era from the last quarter of the thirteenth and the be-
ginning of the fourteenth century.
THE ICONOGRAPHY: THE ELEOUSA
OR THE GLYKOPHILOUSA?
A distinctive iconographie feature of the Cracow icon
is the Christ Child tenderly pressing his face against the
Virgins cheek and his hand nestled inside that of his
mother. In my first note about the painting I used the
epithet Eleousa, focusing on the characteristic motif of
the Christ Child hugging his face against the cheek of his
mother.30 The same term was used by Fr Michal Janocha
to describe the painting in a short catalogue entry, and
by Paweł Pencakowski, in whose opinion the repainting
made the icon look similar to the images of the so-called
Cracow Hodegetrias.31 Mirosław P. Kruk, in contrast,
used the epithet ‘Sweet-loving’, being an equivalent of the
Greek term Glykophilousa.32
There has been a noticeable increase in scholarly inter-
est in Marian iconography in Byzantine art since the first
decade of the twenty-first century. It was likely stimulated
to some extent by the excellent exhibition, Mother of God,
opened in October 2000 in the Benaki Museum in Ath-
ens. A conference, entitled Images of the Mother of God:
Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, organised joint-
ly by the museum and the Institute for Byzantine Studies
in Athens, was held in January of the following year. Both
the exhibition catalogue and conference proceedings were
published under the editorship of Maria Vassilaki of the
University of Thessaly (IIaveniOTf]pio GeooaXiaç) at Vo-
los.33 Yet, the question of Byzantine images of the Virgin
Eleousa had a merely marginal position in the catalogue
entries and papers appearing in both of these publica-
tions.34 At the same time, the Russian scholar Olga Etingof
published an extensive study of Byzantine Marian iconog-
raphy loosely based on the investigation of the Eleousa
Mother of God of Vladimir.35 Etingof proposed to replace
the epithet of the Eleousa with that of the Glykophilousa
(rXvKocpiXovoa) and its Russian equivalent Ласкающая
30 See note 5 above.
31 M. Janocha, Ikony w Polsce, pp. 420-421 (as in note 6); P. Pen-
cakowski, Recepcja dzieł dawnej sztuki i pamiątek przeszło-
ści w diecezji krakowskiej w epoce kontrreformacji, Kraków 2009
(Studia i Materiały Wydziału Konserwacji i Restauracji Dzieł
Sztuki w Krakowie, XVIII), p. 161.
32 M.P. Kruk, Ikony-obrazy, p. 323, figs 4.1-4.2 (as in note 7).
33 Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. by M. Vassilaki,
exh. cat. Athens, Benaki Museum, Athens and Milan, 2000;
Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in
Byzantium, ed. by M. Vassilaki, Burlington, 2005.
34 Ibidem (according to index).
35 O.E. Etingof, Obraz Bogomateri. Ocherki vizantiiskoi ikonografii
XI-XIII vekov, Moscow, 2000.
7. The Virgin Eleousa, second half of the 15th c., circle of Andreas
Ritzos. Photo: after N. Chatzidakis, Ikonen - die Sammlung Velime-
zis, Athens, 2001
iconographie motifs, with simultaneously expanding the
narrative Marian and Christological cycles. A new canon
of human figure appeared - with monumental propor-
tions and expressively modelled garments, amply folded
or picturesquely draped. Physiognomic types changed as
well: the former ascetic and serious appearances were re-
placed by more serene types, with softly modelled facial
features. The palette became simpler but markedly bright-
er, with a predominance of bright blue and green as well
as amethyst violet. The richness of their various hues can
be best appreciated in the tonal modelling of garments
and in the landscapes.
Similar features can be seen in the faces of the Virgin
and the Christ Child in the painting under discussion.
The oval, softly modelled outlines of Mary’s face, with
ochre-yellow underpainting of flesh colours and delicate
highlights in the form of minute lines along the lower
eyelid, above the upper lip and in the dimple of the chin
were standard features of painterly modelling at that time.
Particularly notable is also the painterly manner of ren-
dering the shape of the narrow nose, with its rounded tip
highlighted in white by means of a delicate oval patch. The
painter masterfully combined cold and warm hues in or-
der to achieve the natural warmth of the flesh colour.
The same Palaiologan attributes can be seen in the face
of the Christ Child, with its markedly rounded cheeks,
large eyes and short, as if upturned, nose.
At the present, preliminary stage of research it would
be difficult to indicate works of art comparable to the
Cracow icon, but many of its characteristics suggest the
works stylistic affinities with the painting of the Palaiolo-
gan era from the last quarter of the thirteenth and the be-
ginning of the fourteenth century.
THE ICONOGRAPHY: THE ELEOUSA
OR THE GLYKOPHILOUSA?
A distinctive iconographie feature of the Cracow icon
is the Christ Child tenderly pressing his face against the
Virgins cheek and his hand nestled inside that of his
mother. In my first note about the painting I used the
epithet Eleousa, focusing on the characteristic motif of
the Christ Child hugging his face against the cheek of his
mother.30 The same term was used by Fr Michal Janocha
to describe the painting in a short catalogue entry, and
by Paweł Pencakowski, in whose opinion the repainting
made the icon look similar to the images of the so-called
Cracow Hodegetrias.31 Mirosław P. Kruk, in contrast,
used the epithet ‘Sweet-loving’, being an equivalent of the
Greek term Glykophilousa.32
There has been a noticeable increase in scholarly inter-
est in Marian iconography in Byzantine art since the first
decade of the twenty-first century. It was likely stimulated
to some extent by the excellent exhibition, Mother of God,
opened in October 2000 in the Benaki Museum in Ath-
ens. A conference, entitled Images of the Mother of God:
Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, organised joint-
ly by the museum and the Institute for Byzantine Studies
in Athens, was held in January of the following year. Both
the exhibition catalogue and conference proceedings were
published under the editorship of Maria Vassilaki of the
University of Thessaly (IIaveniOTf]pio GeooaXiaç) at Vo-
los.33 Yet, the question of Byzantine images of the Virgin
Eleousa had a merely marginal position in the catalogue
entries and papers appearing in both of these publica-
tions.34 At the same time, the Russian scholar Olga Etingof
published an extensive study of Byzantine Marian iconog-
raphy loosely based on the investigation of the Eleousa
Mother of God of Vladimir.35 Etingof proposed to replace
the epithet of the Eleousa with that of the Glykophilousa
(rXvKocpiXovoa) and its Russian equivalent Ласкающая
30 See note 5 above.
31 M. Janocha, Ikony w Polsce, pp. 420-421 (as in note 6); P. Pen-
cakowski, Recepcja dzieł dawnej sztuki i pamiątek przeszło-
ści w diecezji krakowskiej w epoce kontrreformacji, Kraków 2009
(Studia i Materiały Wydziału Konserwacji i Restauracji Dzieł
Sztuki w Krakowie, XVIII), p. 161.
32 M.P. Kruk, Ikony-obrazy, p. 323, figs 4.1-4.2 (as in note 7).
33 Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. by M. Vassilaki,
exh. cat. Athens, Benaki Museum, Athens and Milan, 2000;
Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in
Byzantium, ed. by M. Vassilaki, Burlington, 2005.
34 Ibidem (according to index).
35 O.E. Etingof, Obraz Bogomateri. Ocherki vizantiiskoi ikonografii
XI-XIII vekov, Moscow, 2000.