Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Icon with the Virgin and Child, Saints, Angels, and the Hand of God
Not on view
This painting is one of the oldest surviving icons in the world. Mary sits on a bejeweled throne wearing red shoes, attributes of imperial imagery. Holding the infant Jesus on her lap, she is flanked by Saints Theodore and George holding their martyrs’ crosses and wearing military dress. Behind these stiffly formal figures, two angels lean backward, looking upward to link the scene to the hand of God extending down from the heavens. Similar images remained popular for centuries from Constantinople to Ethiopia. The icon was possibly given to the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai by the Byzantine emperor Justinian when he ordered the site fortified and provided with a church, between 548 and 565.
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