Exhibited 19th C. Russian Icon, Saint Luke, Half Length

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Ancient | Asian | Ethnographic Winter Variety...

By Artemis Gallery

Jan 10, 2019

Set Reminder 2019-01-10 10:00:00 2019-01-10 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Ancient | Asian | Ethnographic Winter Variety https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/artemis-gallery/ancient-asian-ethnographic-winter-variety-3780
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• Lot Description
  Russia, ca. 19th century CE. A half-length depiction of Saint Luke the Evangelist, finely painted in egg tempera and gold leaf on a wood roundel with an integral raised 'frame', looking out from his haloed state (that circular form mirrored in the beautiful gilded round frame surrounding his image), donning sky blue and purple robes, poised with his hands gently crossed. Size: 12.5" in diameter (31.8 cm)
  
  Saint Luke is also known as Luke the Painter, because as the author of the “Gospel of Jesus’s Childhood” he is believed to have been the first artist to portray Mary with the Christ Child. This understanding is based upon ancient icons from Thebes and Antioch attributed to the evangelist, later transferred to Russia and Constantinople. As the first to paint the Theotokos (Mother of God), Luke’s icons include the Hodegetria of the Constantinople Church of the Blachernae, which legend tells us restored the eyesight of two blind men – hence, the name Hodegetria meaning, “She who gives sight” or “shows the way” – as well as the Virgin of Smolensk, a prototype for numerous Marian icons that came to Russia in the 12th century. Luke’s symbol is the ox or calf, because his Gospel begins with a sacrifice that Zechariah (John the Baptist’s father) made.
  
  Although we can only see Saint Luke’s head, torso and folded arms, one can imagine the evangelist seated in his scriptorium, surrounded by shelves filled with volumes and scrolls, parchments, quills, erasing knives, and inks. Images of the evangelists derived from miniatures of illuminated Gospel books and Gospel lectionaries showing them at work in their scriptoria. These portrayals were oftentimes painted on the outside of the royal doors. Here of course, his likeness is cropped by a circular frame, the pristine form echoing the orb-like halo around his head.
  
  
  
  Exhibited in "Windows Into Heaven: Russian Icons from the Lilly and Francis Robicsek Collection of Religious Art" at the Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina (December 20, 2003 through February 22, 2004) which presented highlights of one of the world's great artistic traditions through an extraordinary group of sixty-five 18th and 19th century Russian icons on loan from the private collection of Lilly and Francis Robicsek.
  
  Icons (icon means "image" in Greek) are sacred objects within the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. Found in homes as well as churches, these painted images depict holy persons and saints as well as illustrate scenes from the Scriptures. Some icons are encased in precious metal covers (oklads) adorned with pearls and semi-precious stones or glass-fronted wooden cases (kiots). Icons are not worshiped, but are instead venerated for their ability to focus the power of an individual's prayer to God. As such they are truly "windows into heaven."
  
  The “Windows Into Heaven” exhibition profiled a magnificent chapter of Russian artistry, the embrace of the Russian Orthodox faith of religious icons during the Romanov centuries. The Russian religious faith was an offshoot of Byzantine Christianity, which in 1054 parted ways from Roman Catholicism. Icons were and continue to be religious images created for veneration. As a focus for prayers and meditation for believers, icons serve as “windows into heaven.”
  
  Provenance: Ex-Lilly and Francis Robicsek Collection of Religious Art, Charlotte, NC; exhibited at Mint Museum of Art "Windows Into Heaven", Charlotte, North Carolina (December 20, 2003 through February 22, 2004)
  
  All items legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and are guaranteed to be as described or your money back.
  
  A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids.
  
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  #119451

  Condition

  Round icon has curved over the ages. Fissures and losses to integral frame as shown. Minor wear and losses to gilded and painted surfaces of icon as shown. Text of one rectangular banner difficult to decipher. A few pierced marks on verso. Mint Museum label and wire for suspension also on verso.
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