![]() Devotion to it, and its powers, was so great that it became a symbol of the city and was eventually called the Salus populi romani (salvation of the Roman people). Tempera on panel, 117 x 79 cm (46 1/10 x 31 1/10 in.)Īnother painting thought to have been made by Luke still resides in Rome’s S. The icon was housed in the pope’s private chapel in the Lateran Palace until, after miraculously ending a plague epidemic in 1231, it was transferred to the church of S. One such image attributed to Luke is the Virgin of S. They were believed to work many types of miracles, not only delivering worshipers from plagues and natural disasters but also granting victory to cities in war and snatching young children from certain death. These deeply venerated icons were often the focus of religious festivals and carried in procession. Rome also boasted at least ten icons believed, like the Hodegetria, to have been painted by Saint Luke’s own hand. The still elegance of its line, the abstracting quality of its gold background and striations (lines) in the drapery, Jesus’s confronting gaze-are all characteristic of Byzantine icons. The Hodegetria can be recognized in El Greco’s painting of Luke and in the Triumph of Orthodoxy icon. Copies of the icon, however, could be found everywhere from Russia to Ethiopia some six hundred were known in Rome. 4 The original Hodegetria seems to have vanished following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. make their prayers and devotions with sobbing and wailing” before it. A Spanish visitor in 1403 described how “all. It was said to produce miracles daily and became such a part of the city’s life that it was carried out of the church every Tuesday so it could be seen by the public. Known as the Hodegetria-she who points the way-the original icon was taken in the fifth century to the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, and installed there in the Hodegon monastery. The second, a fresco in the church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence, is by the Italian mannerist artist Giorgio Vasari, who painted himself as Saint Luke.Īround the twelfth century one icon in particular came to be identified with Luke’s image: a half-length portrait of Mary holding the child and pointing toward him as the way of salvation. El Greco had trained and worked as an icon painter in his native Crete before he left to study Western-style painting in Venice and Florence. The first work is an icon by Domenikos Theotokopoulos, better known as El Greco. The two examples here were probably painted within two years of each other, yet their styles are worlds apart-pointing to differing conceptions of the painted image in Byzantine and Western traditions. ![]() Saint Luke Painting a Portrait of the Madonna (Self-portrait), after 1565ĭepictions of Saint Luke painting the Virgin were themselves popular. ![]()
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