Icon depicting the Virgin Hodegetria

The Virgin is depicted in the type of the Hodegetria. Her head is of elongated shape and Christ has a high bare forehead. The facial features are clearly drawn, though in a somewhat weak manner, and the flesh is picked out in dense white highlights that cover the surface of the cheek and model the volumes around the nose. The Virgin’s well-drawn hand with long fingers is run through with parallel undulating white lines.

The icon, which is the outcome of the repetition of the familiar working drawing (anthivolon) of the fifteenth-century Hodegetria is closer to the work of conservative late sixteenth-century painters, such as Emmanuel Lambardos, and can be dated to around 1600.

PUBLICATION
Chatzidakis N. 2007. Catalogue no. 169, in Skampavias K.—Chatzidakis N. (eds), Paul and Alexandra Canellopoulos Museum.Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art, Athens, 304–305.