Icon of the Mother of God and Infant Christ (Virgin Eleousa)
attributed to Angelos Akotantos (Cretan, died 1450)
c. 1425–50
- Medium
- tempera and gold on wood
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Unframed: 96 x 70 cm (37 13/16 x 27 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- Republic of Venice, Kingdom of Candia, Candia (Heraklion, Crete, Greece) or Byzantine Empire, Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Medieval Art
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This large icon of a tender embrace between the Virgin Mary and Christ likely hung on a Greek Orthodox church’s iconostasis, a screen separating the congregation from the altar-containing sanctuary, which only clergy could enter. A skilled painter of faces and draperies, Angelos Akotantos was among Crete’s most sought-after artists. Based in Byzantium’s artistic center in his hometown of Candia, he painted for imperial clients and beyond. Despite theological differences, Cretan icons of Mary were popular in Ethiopia. In the early 1500s, Emperor Lebna Dengel sent monks Zekre and Pawli to acquire Cretan icons for him. Twenty-nine Cretan icons are still venerated (honored) in Ethiopian churches.
