Pendant with the Mother of God
Madonna and Child Flanked by Four Saints
Attributed to Naddo Ceccarelli
ca. 1339-1347
Tempera and gold leaf on panel
2014.3.5
Attributed to Naddo Ceccarelli Italian, active ca. 1339–1347 Virgin and Child Flanked by Four Saints Tempera and gold leaf on wood Like a Gothic dollhouse, this delicate three-part altarpiece shelters the Virgin and her son at center stage, where they tower over the saints who attend to them. The work’s fairly modest size suggests that it was not a church commission, but a work used in private worship. Nonetheless, its luminous colors, delicate floral banding, and lavish gold-leaf background suggest that the buyer paid a pretty penny to hang it at home. During the Middle Ages, an intense devotional cult paid homage to the Virgin Mary and celebrated her role as the blessed Mother of God with paintings like this one.
Mother of God with Saints,
also known as The Werhner Triptych
900s / 10thC
Byzantine
Ivory
British Museum, 1978,0502.10
Triptych; ivory; in the central panel stands the Virgin Hodegetria; on the side leaves an angel and two saints in medallions; on the left St Nicholas and St Theodore, and on the right St John Chrysostom and St George.
The Mother of God Feodorovskaya
17th Century
Moscow, Russia
Wood, silver, gesso, gold
1998,0605.38
This icon represents a well-known type in Byzantine art called the ‘Glykophilousa’ (also known as ‘Eleusa’) and which was to spread all over the Orthodox world. Several variations are known. This type, with a ‘bare leg’, became known in Russian icon painting in the 13th century as the ‘Mother of God Feodorovskaya’. The icon’s name derives from a legend in which the miracle-working icon first appeared in a forest to Prince Basil of Yaroslavl’ on 16 August 1239.
The icon was subsequently taken to the church of Theodore Stratilates in the town of Kostroma. St Theodore Stratilates was a 4th-century martyr-saint especially esteemed as the protector of warriors and princes. Michael Romanov (1596–1645), the first tsar of the Romanov dynasty, was blessed by this miracle-making icon when he came to the Russian throne in 1613. He established a special celebration feast to the icon on 14 March. The Feodorovskaya icon subsequently became one of the most glorified images of the Virgin Mary in Russia and became widespread through copies.
The Mother of God Vladimirskaya with Feasts and Saints
Central Panel 16th Century, Border Scenes 19th Century
Russia
Egg tempera on wood
R2009.21
The Nativity of Christ
16th Century
Rostov, Russia
Wood, gesso
1986,1201.2
The narrative elements are based on texts from the Gospels (Matthew 1:18–25, 2:1–12; Luke 2:11–20) and the 2nd- or 3rd-century apocryphal ‘Protoevangelion of James’. The composition of this icon follows the Byzantine-Russian tradition in its simplified version. Both the rather sketchy style of the painting and the large scale of the two angels are indicative of a provincial style. This icon, together with three others representing the Presentation in the Temple, the Baptism, and the Crucifixion, all came from the same Feasts series of an iconastasis (see Temple Gallery reference below).
Two-Sided Icon: Mother of God Hodegetria and the Raising of Lazarus
c. 1550
Russia
Egg Tempera on Wood
R2008.8
Two-sided icons were often carried both within and outside of the church in numerous religious and civic processions.
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