An Encaustic Icon of Christ at Sinai

* I wish to thank Professor K. Weitzmann most sincerely for having read this paper during my stay in Princeton, and for his useful suggestions, as well as his helpful assistance in the task of preparing the manuscript for publication in English. I wish to extend my thanks also to Professor G. Matthiae, Soprintendente alle Gallerie del Lazio, for supplying the photographs of the Saints Cosmas and Damian mosaics, to Mrs. Manto Eokonomidou, of the Numismatic Collection, Athens, for permission to photograph the solidus of Justinian II, and to the Trustees of the British Museum for supplying the photograph of the mummy portrait.

Abstract

The number of surviving icons from the pre-iconoclastic period being, as is well known, extremely limited, it is interesting to be able to add to this group a major work that casts new light on the middle range of possibilities in this art. The late Georges Sotiriou and his wife, Mme. M. G. Sotiriou, in their book on the icons of the monastery of Saint Catherine at Sinai—a landmark in studies of Byzantine painting—have already published, as No. 174, an icon of Christ Pantocrator whose uncommon characteristics led the authors to the hypothesis that the modern appearance of the work was due to the repainting of an early Christian icon.¹