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An Early Cretan Icon of the Dormition of the Virgin, in the Iviron Monastery

Articles

• Τσιγαρίδας, Ευθύμιος
• ΤΣΙΓΑΡΙΔΑΣ, Ευθύμιος Ν.

There is a small icon of the Dormition of the Virgin, in theIviron monastery on Mount Athos (Figs 1,4 and 5).In terms of iconography it is a simplified version of an iconographie schema which, with minor differentiations, enjoyedwide dissemination in a series of Post-Byzantine icons of theCretan School, from the second half of the fifteenth into theseventeenth century. Source of this basic iconographie typeof the Dormition, which emanates from Late Palaiologanworks of the first half of the fifteenth century, produced inCrete, seems to be works attributed to the painter AndreasRitzos and his workshop.The composition, the typological and the physiognomictraits of the figures in the representation, as well as the artistic manner (Figs 6-8), also link the icon with works by Andreas Ritzos and his workshop, such as the icon in the Hellenic Institute in Venice (Fig. 2), and the icon of the samesubject in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow (Fig. 3). Furthermore, the use of this iconographie type of the icon in the Iviron monastery by Nikolaos Ritzos, Andreas's son, in thesmall representation of the Dormition of the Virgin on theicon by him in Sarajevo, as well as by Theophanes the Cretan,who studied in the workshop of Andreas or Nikolaos Ritzos,in the icon from the Koimesis church at Kalambaka, advocate the attribution of the Iviron monastery icon to AndreasRitzos or his workshop and its dating to the second half ofthe fifteenth century.

• Arts
• History and Archaeology

• Art and religion

• http://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/deltion/article/view/4333
• http://dx.doi.org/10.12681/dchae.586