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SAINT JAMES THE LESS

27.8 x 20.7 x 1.8 cm

Early 18th century

The saint, seated on a throne with cushion, holds an open gospel book and the patriarchal crosier in his left hand, while blessing with his outstretched right. He wears a white sticharion patterned with red and black flowers and a green phailonion with red quatrefoil crosses and a red lining. The foliate ornament on the base of the throne was repeated on the back, the greater part of which has been destroyed. On the gold ground, two angels in clouds gesture towards the saint. This area of the icon is considerably effaced due to previous cleaning by use of fire, which affected the saint’s face and the figures of the two angels, who held scrolls with inscriptions, now destroyed. The scrolls can be seen clearly in the infrared photograph (Fig. 206), while the saint’s features are more distinct: he has a long white curly beard and long hair falling behind on the shoulders. Towards the top is the inscription in cursive: ὀ ἄγιος ‘Ιάκοβος ὀ ἀδελφόθεος (Saint James the Adelphotheos).

Saint James ‘Brother of God’, son of Joseph and first Bishop of Jerusalem,¹ is depicted according to the description in the Painter’s Manual, as ‘an old man with long beard’.² However, his facial features are reminiscent of Saint Nicholas: the white hair is arranged in the same manner on the forehead and temples, while the beard seems to be divided into two sections, the upper thicker and rounded, as on Saint Nicholas. It seems that the characteristics of James were not crystallized in icon painting as they were for other saints. In the earliest known icon of the Adelphotheos, 1600-1610, in Patmos, he is portrayed in bishop’s vestments and enthroned, as in our icon, but with different facial features: short black hair and a long beard.³ His physiognomy is different again in the icon by Emmanuel Tzanes, 1683, in the Greek Institute, Venice,⁴ where he has thick white hair and a long forked beard, and in an icon by Stephanos Tzankarolas, in the Benaki Museum, he is shown standing, full-bodied, with a long black beard.⁵ The saint’s frontal pose in our icon is the same as that in Tzanes’s icon. This attitude originates from the Cretan model of the enthroned hierarch, around 1500, as recognized in the Cretan icon of Saint Nicholas Cat. no. 6.⁶ The painter of our icon is even more faithful to this model, particularly in the arrangement of the drapery on the sticharion and phailonion, as well as in the position of the epigonation and the epitrachelion. The only differences are the addition of the polychrome motifs on the vestments and the Baroque form of the throne with the volute leaves, quite different from the type of throne in Tzanes’s icon but encountered on icons from his workshop in Corfu.⁷
The same type of enthroned hierarch is followed by other painters in the Ionian Islands in the early decades of the eighteenth century, such as Konstantinos Kontarinis in his icon of Saint Antypas (Cat. no. 44) and Nikolaos Kallergis in his icon of Saint Spyridon (Cat. no. 46), which also includes angels with inscribed scrolls. The copying of a model by Tzanes and the conservative rendering of the saint’s characteristics, as far as can be discerned, recall the art of Konstantinos Kontarinis, who, moreover, frequently uses cursive lettering in his signature, as on the icon of Saint Antypas Cat. no. 44. The cursive inscription of the saint’s name on our icon is consistent with this painter’s manner, but because of the damage it is difficult to decipher the other distinctive traits — firm drawing, linear rendering — of his art. Lastly, the tiny polychrome floral motifs on the archiepiscopal vestments bring to mind the preferences of one of Kontarinis’s contemporaries, the Zakynthian painter Nikolaos Kallergis,⁸ who presented Saint Spyridon (Cat. no. 46) in a corresponding iconography. The lower part of the icon at the base of the throne, where the painter’s signature normally appears, has been completely destroyed. The icon of Saint James is the work of a Heptanesian painter of the early eighteenth century, who like Konstantinos Kontarinis followed the models established by the icons of Emmanuel Tzanes.

CONDITION  Rather poor. Considerable damage from previous cleaning, on the modelling of the saint’s face, on the figures of the angels and the gold ground. Greater damage at the bottom, near the border.

PROVENANCE  Zakynthos (?).

Bibliography Unpublished.

NOTES
1. Feast day 23 October, see Hermeneia 1909, 262.
2. Hermeneia 1909, 151.
3. Chatzidakis 1985, no. 98, 139-140, pl. 47, of 1600-1610, with relevant bibliography on the saint and his ordination on 139-140, n. 2.
4. Chatzidakis 1962, no. 114, 135-136, pl. 60.
5. Xyngopoulos 1936, 63-64. Chatzidakis mentions that there was an icon of the same subject, signed by Emmanuel Tzanes, 1668, in an Athens antique shop in 1950 (Chatzidakis 1962, 136, n. 2).
6. For the iconography and its diffusion see above 97-99 and nn. 16-20.
7. See Vocotopoulos 1990, nos 107-118, pp. 148-152, figs 271-278.
8. See Cat. no. 46, 346-353 with bibliography.