See the Book

SAINT PETER

49 x 34 x 1.8 cm

Mid-17th century

Saint Peter is portrayed against the gold ground, waist-length and turned three-quarters right. In his left hand he holds an open scroll, in the form of a rhipidion, with the inscription: CΙΜΩΝ ΠΕΤΡΟC ΔΟΥΛΟC KAI ΑΠΟCTOΛΟC IHCOY XΡΙCΤΟΥ TOIC ICOTIMIAC HMIN ΛΑ… XOYCΙΠΙ… (Simon Peter servant and apostle of Jesus Christ …) and a pair of keys; his right handblesses with the fourth finger bent. His face is painted with the familiar distinctive features — a marked frown, white curly hair and short round beard.¹ He wears a deep blue chiton with vertical red clavus and a brown himation wound round the waist and covering the left arm.
The figure of the apostle holding an open scroll in the form of a rhipidion derives from an iconography established in fifteenth-century Cretan painting and is encountered among the representations framing the icon of the Virgin with Angels, in the Benaki Museum;² it is known however from the Palaeologan era, as in the icon in the British Museum.³
The same type was used by the great sixteenth-century painters such as Theophanis, in an icon in the Protaton, ad Michael Damaskenos, in an icon in Corfu, as well as loseph Chouris in a Cypriot icon from the epistyle of an iconostasis, of 1544.⁴ The only difference between our icon and the known examples is the text in the inscription in the scroll, which does not follow the First Epistle of Peter (1:3ff.) “΄Αδελφοί…΄⁵
On the basis of style our icon cannot be assigned to any of the known Cretan or Mainland Greek workshops of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It displays greater affinity to two seventeenth-century icons of the apostles in the Historical Museum, Moscow, of more or less the same dimensions (Fig. 161).⁶ The soft modelling of the flesh on the face is similar, while the wrinkles on the brow are drawn in a markedly linear manner; another characteristic device in these icons is the calligraphic rendering of the hair and beard with parallel wavy lines. The meticulous, linear treatment of the drapery and the fine lettering of the inscription in the scroll likewise bespeak a penchant for the calligraphic. Lastly, common to these icons is the simple yet careful design of the punched decoration on the border of the saint’s halo. Our icon, with its painstaking technique bears the imprint of the painter’s personal style and was produced in a workshop related to and perhaps contemporary with Emmanuel Tzanes.

CONDITION Very good apart from damage to the wood and painting in the left section.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Unpublished.

Notes
1. For the iconography see Weitzmann 1983.
2. N. Chatzidakis 1983, 29-30, no. 18.
3. From Byzantium to El Greco 1987, 156-157, no 16 (R. Cormack)
4, Chatzidakis 1956, 283ff., pl. KZ; Vocotopoulos 1990, 57, with other examples, no. 31, fig. 140, Icons from Cyprus 1976, 110, no. 42. Papageorghiou 1991, 116ff.
5. The text is not included in his service (akolouthia), see Menaion for June 1972, 198-209.
6.Saint Mark and Saint Luke (47.55 x 35 cm and 48.5 x 36 cm respectively); see Icons of Cretan
Art 1993, 434-435, nos 83, 84 (I. Kyzlasova – N. Markina). Post-Byzantine Painting 1995, no. 64,
222 (Saint Mark).