DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55208#0027
18 THE DEESIS PANEL OF THE SOUTH GALLERY
Her face is an elongated oval. The delicately grieved mouth and the un-
fathomable golden-brown eyes plead in the sublime compassion of universal
Motherhood (Pl. XXIII).
The lines in the face are relaxed as in the petals of a flower. In marble of
faintest rose flushing to white vermilion, the artist sought his colours to give
the luminosity of the pallor of the face. Warm dark olive is used for the darkest
shades and colour of ivory freshly cut for the lighted parts. The stronger half-
shades are blue, greenish-blue, bluish-grey, and rose. High lights are less
numerous than in the transcendent face of Christ. To make the passage from
shades to half-shades softer, there is frequently set near a shaded cube, either
another cube of the same colour but of lighter hue, or one of a colour quite
different. The series of blue tones expressing the half-shades are set in the face
with an audacity of contemporary painters (Pl. XXIV).
The face is outlined in dark olive on the shaded side and greyish-blue on the
lighted. Half-shades are in several tones of olive, light blue, and green, like
moss caught in melting snow. Cinnabar is used to draw the eyelids, the lips,
the line and wing of the nose. Eyebrows are of tender young olive. The
pupils of the eyes are blue, the iris bluish-olive. The eyeballs with rose
lachrymals are painted with colours ranging from a light-like white to lightest
blue. The illumination of the cheeks is pale rose and rose-grey. There is a pale
half-flush that dies along the cheek in the blue-green shadow of the neck. The
mouth is in three hues of extending tones of rose with olive shades deepening
in wax-red outlines. The chin is rounded in dark olive for its darkest contour,
the lighted parts are alternating rows of grey passing through blue to light rose.
The Mother of God is garbed in maphorion and chiton. Only an indication
of the chiton remains in deep white. The hair is carefully concealed, in accor-
dance with Oriental custom observed among married women, by a cap woven
in pearl-blue silk worn close to the head. The sharp curves of the maphorion
and cap are a whirling frame around the quiet lines of cubes of the face that
express controlled emotion [8].
The maphorion is of silk lightly dipped, and again dipped, and dipped again,
as St. Basil said it should be to obtain perfect colour, in a blue dye, rendered
in opaque tessellae of six values, the darkest in the surprise of the folds. It is
modestly edged in gold of which only a few cubes are preserved, the rest is
indicated by a little of the setting-bed. A gold equal-armed cross is woven to
be on the forehead. The inner side of the maphorion appears near the chin and
neck in shadows of dark olive-green. The pale early-dawn cloud colour of
this vestment differs from the deep heaven-hued blue of the ninth and tenth
century representations of textiles rendered by tessellae fused at a low tempera-
Her face is an elongated oval. The delicately grieved mouth and the un-
fathomable golden-brown eyes plead in the sublime compassion of universal
Motherhood (Pl. XXIII).
The lines in the face are relaxed as in the petals of a flower. In marble of
faintest rose flushing to white vermilion, the artist sought his colours to give
the luminosity of the pallor of the face. Warm dark olive is used for the darkest
shades and colour of ivory freshly cut for the lighted parts. The stronger half-
shades are blue, greenish-blue, bluish-grey, and rose. High lights are less
numerous than in the transcendent face of Christ. To make the passage from
shades to half-shades softer, there is frequently set near a shaded cube, either
another cube of the same colour but of lighter hue, or one of a colour quite
different. The series of blue tones expressing the half-shades are set in the face
with an audacity of contemporary painters (Pl. XXIV).
The face is outlined in dark olive on the shaded side and greyish-blue on the
lighted. Half-shades are in several tones of olive, light blue, and green, like
moss caught in melting snow. Cinnabar is used to draw the eyelids, the lips,
the line and wing of the nose. Eyebrows are of tender young olive. The
pupils of the eyes are blue, the iris bluish-olive. The eyeballs with rose
lachrymals are painted with colours ranging from a light-like white to lightest
blue. The illumination of the cheeks is pale rose and rose-grey. There is a pale
half-flush that dies along the cheek in the blue-green shadow of the neck. The
mouth is in three hues of extending tones of rose with olive shades deepening
in wax-red outlines. The chin is rounded in dark olive for its darkest contour,
the lighted parts are alternating rows of grey passing through blue to light rose.
The Mother of God is garbed in maphorion and chiton. Only an indication
of the chiton remains in deep white. The hair is carefully concealed, in accor-
dance with Oriental custom observed among married women, by a cap woven
in pearl-blue silk worn close to the head. The sharp curves of the maphorion
and cap are a whirling frame around the quiet lines of cubes of the face that
express controlled emotion [8].
The maphorion is of silk lightly dipped, and again dipped, and dipped again,
as St. Basil said it should be to obtain perfect colour, in a blue dye, rendered
in opaque tessellae of six values, the darkest in the surprise of the folds. It is
modestly edged in gold of which only a few cubes are preserved, the rest is
indicated by a little of the setting-bed. A gold equal-armed cross is woven to
be on the forehead. The inner side of the maphorion appears near the chin and
neck in shadows of dark olive-green. The pale early-dawn cloud colour of
this vestment differs from the deep heaven-hued blue of the ninth and tenth
century representations of textiles rendered by tessellae fused at a low tempera-