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#0015
14
century, associating it with a group of icons removed by
Grand Prince Andrei Bogoliubski to Vladimir in 1155:
The same summer [6663/1155] Andrei left his father
for Suzdal' and brought there an icon of the Holy Moth-
er of God that had been brought from Tsargrad [Con-
stantinople] on the same ship as the Pirogoshcha [Moth-
er of God icon] ; and covered it in more than thirty hryv-
nas of gold, not to mention silver, precious stones and
pearls, and [thus] decorated, he put it in his church in
Vladimir.50
As far as the iconographie type of the Virgin Eleousa is
concerned, V N. Lazarev, just as N. P. Kondakov, derived
its origins from the Hodegetria, in a broader discussion
emphasising the Byzantine lineage of this formula, which
was shaped in Constantinople around the eleventh cen-
tury, and from where it spread to Rus', Georgia and West-
ern art.51
Following this train of thought, Mirjana Tatić-Djurić
challenged the mere existence of the iconographie type
of the Virgin Eleousa, arguing strongly that ‘[...] le type
iconographique d’Eléousa n existe pas. Ou pour mieux
dire il ri existe pas de forme unique sous laquelle il appa-
raît. Les artistes médiévaux ont bien su prouver le large
sens de l’appellatif Eléousa signant dans les différentes
époques tout un caléidoscope de variations sur le su-
jet mariologique’ [‘the iconographie type of the Eleousa
does not exist. Or, to be more precise, there does not ex-
ist a distinct form in which it appeared. Medieval artists
knew how to express the broad sense of the epithet of the
Eleousa which in various epochs assumed a whole spec-
trum of different meanings, variations on the Mariologi-
cal theme’] ,52 The kind of ‘migration, so to speak, of the
term ‘Eleousa’ between various Marian images, indicated
50 ‘Того же лета [6663/1155] иде Андрей от отца своего
Суждалю, и принесе ида икону святую Богородицю, юже
принесоша в едином корабли с Пирогощею из Царяграда;
и вкова в ню боле триидесят гривен золота, кроме серебра
и каменья драгого и жемчуга, и украсив и постави и в церк-
ви своей Володимери’, Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopiseï, vol.
I: Lavrentievskaia i Troitskaia lietopisi. Saint Petersburg, 1846,
p. 148. See Gosudarstvennaia Tret'iakovskaia galereia. Katalog
sobraniia, vol. I: Drevnerusskoe iskusstvo X - nachala XV veka,
Moscow, 1995, pp. 35-40; O.E. Ëtingof, ‘K rannei istorii iko-
ny “Vladimirskaia Bogomater'” i traditsii Vlakhernskogo
Bogorodichnogo kul'ta na Rusi v XI-XII w.’, in Drevnerusskoe
iskusstvo: Vizantiia i Drevniaia Rus': K ìoo-letiiu Andreia
Nikolaevicha Grabara {1896-1990), ed. by E.S. Smirnova, Saint
Petersburg, 1999, pp. 290-305.
51 V. N. Lasareff, ‘Studies in the Iconography of the Virgin, The Art
Bulletin, 20,1938, especially pp. 36-42; V. N. Lazarev, ‘Etiudi po
ikonografii Bogomateri’, in V. N. Lazarev, Vizantiiskaia zhivopis',
Moscow, 1971, pp. 282-290.
52 M. Tatić-Djurić, ‘Eleousa. A la recherche du type iconogra¬
phique’, Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik, 25, 1976,
p. 266.
by Tatić-Djurić, has led the scholar to a compelling con-
clusion that this epithet was an expression of a dogma of
Mary’s virginal motherhood combined with the Passion
and death of the Incarnate Logos.53 This complex content
and the metaphorical epithets stemmed mainly from re-
ligious poetry from which Byzantine artists in the post-
iconoclastic period abundantly drew inspiration.54 Ac-
cording to Tatić-Djurić, it was Andrew of Crete who first
associated the name ‘Eleousa’ with the eschatological
sense of Mary’s love.55
‘SHE BEGGED THE CHILD:
LET ME EMBRACE THEE, LORD!’56
Many works of art from the eleventh and twelfth centuries
testify to the fact that the iconographie formula of the Vir-
gin Mary hugging the Christ Child to her cheek had been
known in Byzantium at that time and that such images
enjoyed particular veneration.
From some time scholars have been interested in the
icon with a cycle of Christ’s Passion and his miracles in
the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, from
the end of the eleventh or the twelfth century. The reason
for this interest is a sequence of five images of the Virgin in
the painting’s upper part. The four portrayals of the Virgin
in half-figure are labelled with individual epithets: Bla-
chernitissa, Hodegetria, Hagiosoritissa and Chimeutissa.
The enthroned Mother of God with the Christ Child -
Meter Theou - and a founder in monk’s garb kneeling be-
fore her were depicted in the midpoint of the four imag-
es.57 Apparently, these four icons were especially venerat-
ed by the founder or, more generally, were most venerated
in Constantinople. The image of the Virgin Mary hugging
the Child to her cheek was identified here with the epithet
‘Blachernitissa’, alluding to the miracle-working icon kept
at the Blachernai in the north-western corner of the city
where the imperial palace complex with the famous chap-
el of the Virgin Mary was located.
53 Ibidem, p. 264.
54 See H. Maguire, Art and Eloquence, Princeton, 1981.
55 M. Tatić-Djurić, ‘Eleousa’, pp. 264-265 (as in note 52).
56 Quoted after [Saint Ephraim the Syrian] Św. Efrem Syryjczyk,
‘Pieśń Maryi do Boskiego Dziecięcia’, in Ojcowie Kościoła greccy
i syryjscy. Teksty o Matce Boskiej, transi, and introduction by
W. Kania, Niepokalanów, 1981, p. 45.
57 G. and M. SoTiRiou, Icônes du Mont Sinai, vol. I, Athens, 1956,
pp. 125-128, vol. II: Athens, 1958, figs 146-149; G. Babic, ‘Les
images byzantines et leurs degrés de signification: l’exemple de
l’Hodegitria’, in Byzance et les images. Cycle de conférences organ-
isés au musée du Louvre par le Service culturel du 5 octobre au
7 décembre 1992, Paris, 1994, p. 200, fig. 4; O.E. Ëtingof, Obraz
Bogomateri, pp. 59-61,111-113,128, figs 33,57 (as in note 35); A. Weyl
Carr, ‘Icons and the Object of Pilgrimage in Middle Byzantine
Constantinople’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 56, 2002, pp. 75-92.
century, associating it with a group of icons removed by
Grand Prince Andrei Bogoliubski to Vladimir in 1155:
The same summer [6663/1155] Andrei left his father
for Suzdal' and brought there an icon of the Holy Moth-
er of God that had been brought from Tsargrad [Con-
stantinople] on the same ship as the Pirogoshcha [Moth-
er of God icon] ; and covered it in more than thirty hryv-
nas of gold, not to mention silver, precious stones and
pearls, and [thus] decorated, he put it in his church in
Vladimir.50
As far as the iconographie type of the Virgin Eleousa is
concerned, V N. Lazarev, just as N. P. Kondakov, derived
its origins from the Hodegetria, in a broader discussion
emphasising the Byzantine lineage of this formula, which
was shaped in Constantinople around the eleventh cen-
tury, and from where it spread to Rus', Georgia and West-
ern art.51
Following this train of thought, Mirjana Tatić-Djurić
challenged the mere existence of the iconographie type
of the Virgin Eleousa, arguing strongly that ‘[...] le type
iconographique d’Eléousa n existe pas. Ou pour mieux
dire il ri existe pas de forme unique sous laquelle il appa-
raît. Les artistes médiévaux ont bien su prouver le large
sens de l’appellatif Eléousa signant dans les différentes
époques tout un caléidoscope de variations sur le su-
jet mariologique’ [‘the iconographie type of the Eleousa
does not exist. Or, to be more precise, there does not ex-
ist a distinct form in which it appeared. Medieval artists
knew how to express the broad sense of the epithet of the
Eleousa which in various epochs assumed a whole spec-
trum of different meanings, variations on the Mariologi-
cal theme’] ,52 The kind of ‘migration, so to speak, of the
term ‘Eleousa’ between various Marian images, indicated
50 ‘Того же лета [6663/1155] иде Андрей от отца своего
Суждалю, и принесе ида икону святую Богородицю, юже
принесоша в едином корабли с Пирогощею из Царяграда;
и вкова в ню боле триидесят гривен золота, кроме серебра
и каменья драгого и жемчуга, и украсив и постави и в церк-
ви своей Володимери’, Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopiseï, vol.
I: Lavrentievskaia i Troitskaia lietopisi. Saint Petersburg, 1846,
p. 148. See Gosudarstvennaia Tret'iakovskaia galereia. Katalog
sobraniia, vol. I: Drevnerusskoe iskusstvo X - nachala XV veka,
Moscow, 1995, pp. 35-40; O.E. Ëtingof, ‘K rannei istorii iko-
ny “Vladimirskaia Bogomater'” i traditsii Vlakhernskogo
Bogorodichnogo kul'ta na Rusi v XI-XII w.’, in Drevnerusskoe
iskusstvo: Vizantiia i Drevniaia Rus': K ìoo-letiiu Andreia
Nikolaevicha Grabara {1896-1990), ed. by E.S. Smirnova, Saint
Petersburg, 1999, pp. 290-305.
51 V. N. Lasareff, ‘Studies in the Iconography of the Virgin, The Art
Bulletin, 20,1938, especially pp. 36-42; V. N. Lazarev, ‘Etiudi po
ikonografii Bogomateri’, in V. N. Lazarev, Vizantiiskaia zhivopis',
Moscow, 1971, pp. 282-290.
52 M. Tatić-Djurić, ‘Eleousa. A la recherche du type iconogra¬
phique’, Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik, 25, 1976,
p. 266.
by Tatić-Djurić, has led the scholar to a compelling con-
clusion that this epithet was an expression of a dogma of
Mary’s virginal motherhood combined with the Passion
and death of the Incarnate Logos.53 This complex content
and the metaphorical epithets stemmed mainly from re-
ligious poetry from which Byzantine artists in the post-
iconoclastic period abundantly drew inspiration.54 Ac-
cording to Tatić-Djurić, it was Andrew of Crete who first
associated the name ‘Eleousa’ with the eschatological
sense of Mary’s love.55
‘SHE BEGGED THE CHILD:
LET ME EMBRACE THEE, LORD!’56
Many works of art from the eleventh and twelfth centuries
testify to the fact that the iconographie formula of the Vir-
gin Mary hugging the Christ Child to her cheek had been
known in Byzantium at that time and that such images
enjoyed particular veneration.
From some time scholars have been interested in the
icon with a cycle of Christ’s Passion and his miracles in
the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, from
the end of the eleventh or the twelfth century. The reason
for this interest is a sequence of five images of the Virgin in
the painting’s upper part. The four portrayals of the Virgin
in half-figure are labelled with individual epithets: Bla-
chernitissa, Hodegetria, Hagiosoritissa and Chimeutissa.
The enthroned Mother of God with the Christ Child -
Meter Theou - and a founder in monk’s garb kneeling be-
fore her were depicted in the midpoint of the four imag-
es.57 Apparently, these four icons were especially venerat-
ed by the founder or, more generally, were most venerated
in Constantinople. The image of the Virgin Mary hugging
the Child to her cheek was identified here with the epithet
‘Blachernitissa’, alluding to the miracle-working icon kept
at the Blachernai in the north-western corner of the city
where the imperial palace complex with the famous chap-
el of the Virgin Mary was located.
53 Ibidem, p. 264.
54 See H. Maguire, Art and Eloquence, Princeton, 1981.
55 M. Tatić-Djurić, ‘Eleousa’, pp. 264-265 (as in note 52).
56 Quoted after [Saint Ephraim the Syrian] Św. Efrem Syryjczyk,
‘Pieśń Maryi do Boskiego Dziecięcia’, in Ojcowie Kościoła greccy
i syryjscy. Teksty o Matce Boskiej, transi, and introduction by
W. Kania, Niepokalanów, 1981, p. 45.
57 G. and M. SoTiRiou, Icônes du Mont Sinai, vol. I, Athens, 1956,
pp. 125-128, vol. II: Athens, 1958, figs 146-149; G. Babic, ‘Les
images byzantines et leurs degrés de signification: l’exemple de
l’Hodegitria’, in Byzance et les images. Cycle de conférences organ-
isés au musée du Louvre par le Service culturel du 5 octobre au
7 décembre 1992, Paris, 1994, p. 200, fig. 4; O.E. Ëtingof, Obraz
Bogomateri, pp. 59-61,111-113,128, figs 33,57 (as in note 35); A. Weyl
Carr, ‘Icons and the Object of Pilgrimage in Middle Byzantine
Constantinople’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 56, 2002, pp. 75-92.