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THE DORMITION OF THE VIRGIN

57.5 x 39.2 x 2cm

Second half of 17th century

Christ, at the centre, in frontal pose, holding the Virgin’s soul as a swaddled new-born infant, turns his body slightly tight while gazing down at the Virgin lying on the bier. He stands against an elliptical blue- grey mandorla, within which are four angels drawn in grisaille and a little seraph at the apex. Two angels hold candlesticks with candles and two hold open scrolls with inscriptions; on the left one, in black capitals: TIC AYTH H ΥΠΕΡΒΑCA TA TΩΝ ΑΓΓΕΛΩΝ; on the right, barely legible traces of letters: N…ΘA…BOC. The apostles approach the Virgin’s bier, followed by two women right and a hierarch and a woman left. In front of the bier are a high candlestick and, on a smaller scale, the episode with Jephonias and the angel. Above the bright mandorla is the Assumption of the Virgin, who appears in clouds held by two angels. With her right hand she offers the Girdle to the apostle Thomas, who approaches on a cloud a little lower down, in accordance with the apocryphal Latin text.¹ To left and right, two tall, narrow, two-storey buildings with arcade and balcony of Renaissance character. At the bottom of the icon, on the gold ground, a forged inscription in red capital letters: ,AXΠΔ’ ΠΟΙΗΜΑ ΙΩΑΝΝΟΥ MOCKOY (1684, work of Ioannis Moskos).
The development of the composition around the figure of the Virgin at the centre follows a Palaeologan model, known from a fifteenth-century icon in the Canellopoulos Museum.² Christ is shown with the four angels and the seraph within the elliptical mandorla, and the apostles are ranged about the bier in similar order. Analogous iconographic formats that incorporate the Assumption of the Virgin, as in our icon, are encountered in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Cretan icons: an icon in the Greek Institute, Venice, whose prototype is the Dormition of the Virgin by Andreas Ritzos, in Turin,³ and an icon in the Benaki Museum,⁴ which also includes the arrival of the apostles in clouds. The frontal pose of Christ in contrapposto as well as the elliptical mandorla with the angels holding high candlesticks are rendered in the same way in our icon, in monochromy. In style too the painter of our icon apparently imitates fifteenth-century models, mainly in the treatment of the drapery with small planes carefully highlighted at the edges. Neverthless, the much looser drawing on the angels’ faces, with the heavy eyelids, as well as the form of the buildings in the background, are traits of late seventeenth-century painting. Georgios Klontzas used an analogous iconographic type, with regard to the arrangement of the central figures and the addition of the Assumption of the Virgin, in two icons, in Kos and in the Sinai Monastery (Fig. 186).⁵ In these works the great Cretan painter enriches the iconographic type with several secondary figures and high two-storey buildings with balconies similar to those in our icon, though of much simpler form. The miniature rendering of the Virgin in the clouds is closely linked to Klontzas’s art, as are the attenuated figures of the two apostles beside her bier. These figures also recall the two apostles, with corresponding elongated proportions and similar pose and attire, in the icon of the Dormition of the Virgin by Domenikos Theotokopoulos, in Syros (Figs 184, 185).⁶ It is thus apparent that the painter of our icon not only draws on excellent quality fifteenth- and sixteenth-century models, which he handles successfully, but also applies the techniques of good Cretan painters. The result of this fusion of iconographic models and styles of two different periods is an art of retrospective character which can be detected in icons from the Ionian Islands in the second half of the seventeenth century, such as the Transfiguration (Cat. no. 34), although this follows a more conservative prototype.
The style of the icon of the Dormition of the Virgin, with its well-drawn attenuated figures of the apostles and the miniature figures in the clouds near the top, is closer to the icon of the Deesis by the painter Leos (see Cat. no. 35), which has analogous well-drawn figures with tiny highlights on the flesh and a comparable preference for miniature rendering in the supplementary scenes in the clouds near the top. According to the above, our icon must be the work of a painter employing similar methods and following corresponding early models. In 1957 Xyngopoulos refers to an icon of the Dormition of the Virgin, signed by Ioannis Moskos ‘formerly in the possession of Th. Zoumboulakis’.⁷ The simplistic style of icons bearing the authentic signature of Ioannis Moskos, in the Byzantine Museum⁸ and Corfu,⁹ differs radically from the more sophisticated art of our icon¹⁰ and confirms that the signature is forged.

CONDITION  A previous conservation of the icon destroyed the modelling of the flesh and part of the decoration of the building left, as well as the gold ground. The gesso, traces of gold and the incised preliminary design are discernible, as in other icons in the Collection.

PROVENANCE The Theodoros Zoumboulakis Collection (?) (Xyngopoulos 1957, 316); perhaps from Zakynthos, like the icon Cat. no 54.

Notes
1. For the Virgin’s Girdle see Cat. no. 31, 282-285.
2. From Byzantium to El Greco 1987, no. 23, 161-162 (N. Chatzidakis), with related examples; for the interpretation of the representation see Baltoyanni 1991, 353-372.
3. Chatzidakis 1962, no. 16, pl. 14. Chatzidakis 1974, 177, pl. Z’. N. Chatzidakis 1993, no. 14, 70- 73.
4. El Greco of Crete 1990, no. 1, 114-117 and 314-315 (M. Acheimastou-Potamianou).
5. Acheimastou-Potamianou 1985-86, 125ff., figs 1-10.
6. El Greco of Crete 1990, no. 1, figs 1-3 and pp. 143, 329-330, Acheimastou-Potamianou 1995, 29ff., fig. 3. For this similarity see commentary in the Introduction, 61, n. 80.
7. Xyngopoulos 1957, 316.
8. Dormition of the Virgin, dated 1713, no. T. 1529, and Saint Spyridon in the Loverdos Collection (Papayannopoulos-Palaios 1936, no. 64).
9. ‘In Thee Rejoice’, Vocotopoulos 1990, fig. 304.
10. For the painter see Xyngopoulos 1957, 315-317, with information that should be re-examined see also Vocotopoulos 1990, 161, 162, no. 30, fig. 304.