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THE DORMITION OF THE VIRGIN

55 x 37.5 x 2 cm

18th century

Christ, at the centre in frontal pose, holds on his right side the Virgin’s soul as a swaddled infant. The Virgin lying on the bier is surrounded by the apostles, hierarchs and other figures who usually participate in the scene. Christ appears in a dark mandorla crowned by a red-winged seraph, within which are four angels holding lighted candles. In front of the bier the angel in vigorous movement has just cut off the hands of Jephonias, who falls down backwards. The scene is represented on a red and green checkered floor, in front of a landscape in which two events relating to the Dormition of the Virgin take place. Left, on a hill visible behind a building, the kneeling Virgin receives the message of her death from the angel, and right the apostles stand around her empty tomb, next to the town of Gethsemane. High up at the centre, within a semicircular segment of heaven, is the Holy Trinity — Christ, the Ancient of Days and the Holy Spirit. On either side of Christ’s mandorla the apostles arrive within clouds, executed in grisaille. On the gold ground there are red-lettered inscriptions. At the centre: H KYMHCIC THC Θ(EOTO)KOY (The Dormition of the Virgin); above, near the red border: H AΓIA TPIAC (The Holy Trinity) and below, between the red border and the floor: XEIP KOYΛΟΥΜΠΗ ΙΕΡΕΩC ΤΟΥ ΕΚ ΡΕΘΙΜΗC, AXI’ (Hand of Kouloumbis priest from Rethymnon, 1610), which laboratory examination has shown to be forged. The icon is an enriched version of the Dormition of the Virgin Cat. no. 36 (Fig. 183). The central theme is reproduced in a picturesque and simplified manner, while the figures within the mandorla are painted in vivid colours. A comparable development of the landscape with secondary episodes relating to the Dormition of the Virgin occurs in a large late seventeenth-century icon in the Monastery of Hagios Andreas at Milapidia, Cephalonia.¹However, the closest model to our icon is found in works by Theodoros Poulakis, in Cephalonia, the Byzantine Museum and a private collection in Athens.² In these icons Poulakis copies the prototype used in an icon by the painter Ambrosios Emboros from Chania, now in Kos, dated 1625.³ Several similarities are observed in the arrangement of the figures of the central subject and, primarily, in the presence of the city right, with buildings of virtually identical form painted in monochromy, as well as an analogous depiction of the building left, with flat roof. Lastly, the episode of the angel with Jephonias in our icon is painted in exactly the same manner, in the figures’ poses and garments, as in the icon by Poulakis in the Byzantine Museum,⁴ although there the city with its walls is not shown. Icons of this group obviously constituted the model for the picturesque composition of the Dormition of the Virgin in our icon. The clear drawing, the strong outlines, the bright colours and the graphic details in the background scenes are the distinctive traits of our painter’s art. The faces are oval with raised eyebrows and heavy eyelids, as frequently observed in icons by Theodoros Poulakis, Here, however, the outlines are thicker and the shadows deeper, more closely affined to the art of eighteenth-century icons produced in Asia Minor. The immediacy of the narration is even more striking in the episode of Jephonias, who is dressed as a Roman soldier and with lively movements is about to fall to the ground. According to the above, our icon is assigned to a local provincial workshop of the eighteenth century. The letters in the signature, though in red capitals as in the other inscriptions, are slightly larger and less firmly written, while the date 1610 is not consistent with either the style of the icon or the painter Gerasimos Kouloumbis, as known from the bema doors of the iconostasis in Hagios Demetrios tou Kolla, dated 1719, now in the Zakynthos Museum.⁵ These large-scale works with their clear drawing and strong colours do not permit positive comparison with our smaller icon of the Dormition, in a more popular art, while they confirm the suggestion that the signature is forged.

CONDITION  Manolis Chatzidakis, 1945: ‘The icon is painted on wood with fine gesso on linen. Outlines and details incised.”
The icon has not been conserved previously and is in very good condition. See also Appendix III.

PROVENANCE  The forged signature of a painter known only from icons in Zakynthos suggests that the icon is from that island and that the signature was added by Demetrios Pelekasis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY  Unpublished.

NOTES

1. Konomos 1966, fig 31; see also Cephalonia I 1989, figs 226-230.
2. Rigopoulos 1979, pls 77-79, 106 and 138.
3. Acheimastou-Potamianou 1988, 142f., 144ff., figs 11, 15, 16, 17, 18.
4. Rigopoulos 1979, no. 21, p. 103ff., pl. 138.
5. Personal observation; see also Konomos 1967, 17. Sisilianos 1935, 67 and 119.