VIRGIN OF THE PASSION - Lot 137

VIRGIN OF THE PASSION Venetian-Cretan portable icon, first half of the 16th century Tempera on linden wood panel covered with gold leaf, punched decor aureoles, thin board (8 to 4 mn on the curve), manual sawing visible on the back with a few traces of xylophagous entry (treated, sound board), illegible red wax stamp, upper part torn off and collector's label bearing the number 1 The Mother of God holds Christ on her left arm in an embrace, supporting his bare feet with her right hand, Christ blesses with his left hand and supports the globe surmounted by the cross with his right hand, his face is turned slightly to the left, but his gaze is frontal, forming a clear diagonal with the gaze of his mother, whose features express melancholy. The mother and child are surrounded at the top by the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, who carry the instruments of Christ's future Passion. The Virgin of the Passion is a development known since the 12th century in Constantinople Constantinople, of the Virgin Hodigitria "who shows the Way" [of Christ], whose meaning is identical, but more explicit with regard to the sufferings the Son must endure. Christ is depicted as a child without the innocence of an adult, his face and torso are those of an adult, and his posture of blessing and support of the world already shows him as Pantocrator "His face, turned away from his mother's grief, humanizes him, contrasting with the hieratic frontality of the proto-model of the Virgin Hodigitria, thus emphasizing the prefiguration of the Passion he will undergo in his incarnation. The so-called Venetian-Cretan School was the fruit of cultural and commercial exchanges between Crete, Venice and Constantinople, and thanks to the literati and artists in exile since the fall of the latter in 1453, engendered a veritable golden age, which can be described as the "Cretan Renaissance" and which affected virtually all intellectual and artistic fields, until the Ottoman conquest in 1645. The circulation of goods and artists between Venice and Crete is well documented and very important, indeed archives testify to a large-scale trade in icons painted in Candia in the 15th and 16th centuries, whether in the forma greca (Byzantine model of the Palaeologos) or in the forma latina (Italian Trecento) or the forma greca migliorata (since Giotto), thanks to the boom in private devotional paintings, i.e. portable icons in the Mediterranean Orthodox world and among the Italian bourgeoisie. Some workshops, the madonnari, were even dedicated to the painting of Virgins with Child for this trade. From a stylistic point of view, contacts with Italy introduced a form of naturalism and humanism into the conventional Constantinopolitan framework: the modeling of faces softened, limiting Byzantine hieraticism, drapery was less angular, undulations were accentuated, curves were more supple, anatomy was more carnal and movement began to be introduced into the strict frontal posture. The Virgin of the Passion, in particular, was a highly prized model in the 16th century, known in Italy since the 15th century thanks to icons by Andreas Ritzos (c.1450) preserved in Rome and Bari. The icon shows wear to the pictorial surface, notably to the finishing glazes and the chrysography of the vestments, as well as missing material (faces of the archangels, upper part of the Virgin's halo and maphorion...), a longitudinal crack at the top right and a small lack of support at the top left corner. Structurally, the icon is in very good, sound condition, the visible polychromy and gilding being entirely original and free of repentirs and late additions. The current varnish dates from the last restoration carried out c.1995. 17.5 x 22.5 cm The icon comes from a private collection