Christ Pantocrator of Sinai by Unknown

Christ Pantocrator of Sinai

Two faces in one

Cover the left half of the face and then the right, and you will see it: one side is calm, open, gentle; the other is severe, the brow drawn, the mouth set. The painter did it deliberately. Christ is fully God and fully man, judge and saviour, and the icon says so with the one thing a portrait has, a face. He holds the jewelled Gospel book and raises his right hand in blessing, and behind him is a faint architecture that might be the New Jerusalem.

Sinai, sixth century

Painted in encaustic — pigment in hot wax — probably in Constantinople under Justinian, and sent to the monastery of Saint Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai, where it has remained. The monastery was so remote that the iconoclasts of the eighth century never reached it, which is why this and a handful of others are the only icons of the first Christian centuries to survive. It was cleaned in 1962 and the face we see is the sixth-century one.

About this print

Made from a public-domain reproduction, 13,120 pixels tall. The panel is very tall and narrow; the 1:2 canvases offered here trim a little of the background at each side.

Sources: Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai · Wikidata Q4501499 · Wikimedia Commons