Saint Constantine

Gold ground extending also to the lower part of the icon and framed by a narrow red band.

The saint is depicted to the top of the thighs and in frontal pose. With his right hand he holds before the chest a thin wooden cross with two horizontal arms, and in the lowered left hand a gold sceptre. He has luxuriant but short curly hair and a short round beard. He wears a large gem-studded crown with pointed finials and the opulent raiment of a Byzantine emperor, as imagined by Cretan painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: a light red closed sakkos with gold-embroidered and bejewelled edging on the neck – where it is so wide that it forms a maniakes – and on the sleeves, a cloth-of-gold bejewelled loros and a purple cloak with a gold-embroidered double-headed eagle. The mantle covers most of the left side of his chest and falls behind him; the right edge is drawn up and held in check by the saint’s bent right elbow.

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