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THE DORMITION OF THE VIRGIN

57.5 x 44.5 x 2 cm

Late 17th-18th century

Christ, frontal yet turned slightly left, holds the Virgin’s soul, represented as a little girl completely enveloped in a blue maphorion. He appears in an elliptical mandorla with four angels and a seraph at the top, painted in monochromy. Flanking the Virgin’s bier are the apostles and two hierarchs. Depicted in front of it are a candlestick with candle and the incident of Jephonias and the angel. In the background right and left, two buildings with flat roofs at different heights are linked by a semicircular wall. On the left, exactly below the foot of the bier, a forged inscription in white capital letters: ΔΕΗCIC ΙΩΑΚΕΙΜ ΛΑΜΠΑΡΔΟΥ ΤΟΥ ΚΡΗΤΟC (Supplication of loakeim Lambardos the Cretan).

The Dormition of the Virgin is depicted in a conservative iconographic type without secondary episodes, consistent with the model of certain fifteenth-century Cretan icons, such as the Dormition in London, attributed to Andreas Ritzos (Fig. 198),¹ of Palaeologan origin, as known from the Dormition in Florence.² Common elements of the model are the synoptic presentation of the principal theme of the Dormition, the appearance of angels in monochromy within the mandorla and the presence of the seraph at its apex.³ In these icons the similarity extends to the flat-roofed buildings linked by a semicircular wall in the background. This model is propagated, with minor variations, in other icons too, such as one in the Canellopoulos Museum and another in the City of Athens Museum, of fifteenth century date,⁴ as well as a seventeenth- to eighteenth-century icon in the Zakynthos Museum.⁵ It also constitutes the nucleus of the more complex depictions of the scene in the icons by Andreas Ritzos in Turin and the Greek Institute, Venice,⁶ where four angels appear inside the mandorla, as in our icon. The painter of the Velimezis icon meticulously follows the fifteenth-century Cretan model in every detail, and seeks no originality. Even his style imitates conservative fifteenth-century Cretan models, without Western influences. Nevertheless the figures are squat and the drawing slack, describing broad planes on the drapery, while the colours combine shades of blue and rose, with few intermediate hues. The icon is the work of a local workshop of the late seventeenth or the eighteenth century, which had access to good Cretan models.

CONDITION Quite good, with slight damage from previous conservation.

PROVENANCE The name of Ioakeim Lambardos, forged on the icon, is known only from a contract published by Zois in 1923⁷, which mentions that the painter loakeim Lambardos would undertake the decoration of the church ‘ton Logotheton’ in Zakynthos. This fact permits the hypothesis that the signature was added by Demetrios Pelekasis and, furthermore, that the icon’s provenance is Zakynthos.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Unpublished.

NOTES

1. Baltoyanni 1991, 353ff, pls KA’ and 175.
2. Baltoyanni 1991, 353ff., pl. 175. See also Vocotopoulos 1995, 132, 216, fig. 111 (colour).
3. For the iconographic symbolism see Baltoyanni 1991, 362ff.
4. Holy Image, Holy Space 1988, 123, 202-203, no. 42 (N. Chatzidakis). Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art 1986, no. 95, 92-93 (N. Chatzidakis).
5. Unpublished, exhib. no. 120, personal observation.
6. See above Cat. no. 36, 311, n. 3.
7. Zois 1923, 183. Chatzidakis 1956, 18, n. 27. The identification of the painter as Loannis Lambardos, proposed by Xyngopoulos, does not seem probable, see Xyngopoulos 1936, 32.