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#0017
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9. The Virgin Eleousa, с. 1343, Decani, Monastery of the Pantocrator (detail of the iconostasis).
Photo: www.decani.org
a miracle-working image from Lydda sent to Rome by
Saint German, a patriarch of Constantinople - was repro-
duced.63 Indeed, this type was very popular in Italo-Greek
icon painting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ap-
pearing in a few iconographie and compositional vari-
ants, as for example the icons from the Likhachev collec-
tion.64 A work that seems to reveal closest affinities with
the Cracow painting is the icon in the bishop’s palace at
Ioannina, from about 1500 [Fig. 8], and icons associated
with the milieu of Andreas Ritzos (1421-1492) to whom
Manolis Chatzidakis attributed the invention of the type
[Fig. 7].65 * * The icon at Ioannina bears an inscription read-
ing: HEAEYCA. Yet, a significant feature of icons in this
63 N.P. Likhachev, Materiały dlia istorii russkago ikonopisaniia.
Saint Petersburg, 1906, vol. 1, p. 159.
64 Ibidem, figs 71-73.
65 Byzantine and Post-byzantine Art, Athens, 1985, p. 121, fig. 119.
M. Chatzidakis, ‘Les débuts de l’école Cretoise et la question
de l’école dit italogrecque’, in Mnimosynon Sophias Antoniadi,
Venice, 1974, pp. 169-211 (reprinted in M. Chatzidakis, Études
type - a sandal falling off the Christ Childs foot - is ab-
sent from the Cracow painting.
A similar rendition of the Childs hand held by Mary
can be seen in the icon of the Virgin Episkopiani (Zakin-
thos, the Museum). It is dated to the twelfth century and,
following an inscription at the bottom left, was ‘restored’
- that is, repainted - in 1657.66 Mary’s face is the only un-
touched fragment of the original paint layer. If the artist
who restored the icon repeated the original iconographie
and compositional scheme, then the painting would de-
termine a substantially earlier date for the Child’s hand
motif.
Earlier the iconographie type under discussion had
been known in the milieu of medieval art in Serbia, as
testified by a poorly researched icon with the Virgin Ele-
ousa in the iconostasis in the Church of the Pantocrator
in Decani [Figs 9-10]. The sizeable painting (164.5 * 56 x
sur la peinture postbyzantine, London, 1976 [Variorum Reprints],
p. 181).
66 Byzantine and Post-byzantine Art, pp. 73-75, fig. 76 (as in note 65).
9. The Virgin Eleousa, с. 1343, Decani, Monastery of the Pantocrator (detail of the iconostasis).
Photo: www.decani.org
a miracle-working image from Lydda sent to Rome by
Saint German, a patriarch of Constantinople - was repro-
duced.63 Indeed, this type was very popular in Italo-Greek
icon painting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ap-
pearing in a few iconographie and compositional vari-
ants, as for example the icons from the Likhachev collec-
tion.64 A work that seems to reveal closest affinities with
the Cracow painting is the icon in the bishop’s palace at
Ioannina, from about 1500 [Fig. 8], and icons associated
with the milieu of Andreas Ritzos (1421-1492) to whom
Manolis Chatzidakis attributed the invention of the type
[Fig. 7].65 * * The icon at Ioannina bears an inscription read-
ing: HEAEYCA. Yet, a significant feature of icons in this
63 N.P. Likhachev, Materiały dlia istorii russkago ikonopisaniia.
Saint Petersburg, 1906, vol. 1, p. 159.
64 Ibidem, figs 71-73.
65 Byzantine and Post-byzantine Art, Athens, 1985, p. 121, fig. 119.
M. Chatzidakis, ‘Les débuts de l’école Cretoise et la question
de l’école dit italogrecque’, in Mnimosynon Sophias Antoniadi,
Venice, 1974, pp. 169-211 (reprinted in M. Chatzidakis, Études
type - a sandal falling off the Christ Childs foot - is ab-
sent from the Cracow painting.
A similar rendition of the Childs hand held by Mary
can be seen in the icon of the Virgin Episkopiani (Zakin-
thos, the Museum). It is dated to the twelfth century and,
following an inscription at the bottom left, was ‘restored’
- that is, repainted - in 1657.66 Mary’s face is the only un-
touched fragment of the original paint layer. If the artist
who restored the icon repeated the original iconographie
and compositional scheme, then the painting would de-
termine a substantially earlier date for the Child’s hand
motif.
Earlier the iconographie type under discussion had
been known in the milieu of medieval art in Serbia, as
testified by a poorly researched icon with the Virgin Ele-
ousa in the iconostasis in the Church of the Pantocrator
in Decani [Figs 9-10]. The sizeable painting (164.5 * 56 x
sur la peinture postbyzantine, London, 1976 [Variorum Reprints],
p. 181).
66 Byzantine and Post-byzantine Art, pp. 73-75, fig. 76 (as in note 65).