This is the soul of Dismas being carried to Paradise. Above him - among the grieving angels, we not only see the image of the sun, but just below it an angel holding an infant. Note that he is crucified facing the viewer. In Latin Christianity he was called Dismas. Moving up to the top on the “right hand of Jesus” side, we find one of the malefactors crucified with Jesus - the one who supposedly repented (though not in all accounts: see this posting: ). Just to his left (but notably on what would be the side at the right hand of Jesus) we see the distraught Mary being held up by the other women, and by the youthful-looking disciple John (called “the Theologian” in Eastern Orthodoxy): A lance was used to pierce the side of Jesus. He used it in giving Jesus vinegar to drink, as mentioned in Mark 15:36, Matthew 27:48, and John 19:29. We must not overlook this fellow with his long pole, at the top of which is a sponge. Below the skull we see devils/demons in Hades, upset by the redemptive act taking place above them. This of course is a symbol for the reversal of the “Fall,” at least for Christian believers. It is the skull of Adam - the legendary first man - who was said to have been buried on the site of the Crucifixion. The redemptive blood drips all the way down to the skull in a hollow below the cross. We see the blood dripping down the shaft, and a woman in grief embracing the cross. Let’s move down to the base of the cross: In Christian symbolism, coral was associated with the blood and Passion of Jesus, which is why it was also used as a protective talisman for children. If you look at what is supporting the nest in which the pelican and her brood are found, it appears to be a branching coral. It is put here as a symbol of Jesus giving his blood in the Crucifixion, to give life to believers. It is a popular Western Christian symbol - a pelican tearing open her own breast with her beak, in order to feed the blood to her young, and thus give them life. That is something we do not ordinarily see in Greek iconography. It is divided by the vertical beam of the cross:Īnd of course you recognize the IC XC abbreviations for Iesous Khristos - “Jesus Christ.”īut look at the image just above the very top of the cross. This is a variant of the standard spelling INRI - abbreviating Latin Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum - “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Below that - written in red letters - we see the Greek inscription identifying the image. On the titulus - the “name board” of the cross - we see the letters VNRI. Let’s begin with the inscriptions and the upper portion of the cross: Around him are grieving angels, some catching his blood in chalices: Let’s begin by looking at the focal center of the icon - the image of Jesus on the cross. That it is written in Latin rather than Greek tells us that this image was intended for a “Latinate” customer - A Roman Catholic rather than a Greek Orthodox, and we already know that icon painters on Crete worked for both kinds of customers, and did a very large business in selling icons to Venetian buyers.Īs you can see, there is a great deal of information condensed into this icon. And because we know it is by Andreas Pavias, we know also his dates - 1440 to somewhere within or near the first decade of the 1500s. So we know this is an icon from the Cretan school of icon painting. Candia was both the name for the island of Crete when it was a colony of the Venetian Republic, and of the island’s capital city. First, it reveals the name of the painter - Andreas Pavias - Pinxit means “painted it.” And de Candia - “of Candia”– tells us where he worked. If we look in the lower right corner, we see this Latin inscription: A reader requested a discussion of this detailed image: (National Museum, Athens)

Theodor greek iconographer