Painted Copy of Deesis Mosaic
The original mosaic displaying the Deesis (Christ flanked by the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist) was one of the finest works produced in Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. Concealed for centuries after the fall of the city to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the mosaic was one of the many in Hagia Sophia restored by the Byzantine Institute of America in the late 1930s. The newly revealed mosaics were the focus of an exhibition at the Museum in 1944, when this work, the only full-scale, exact, and authorized copy of the Deesis mosaic, was featured.
Artwork Details
- Title: Painted Copy of Deesis Mosaic
- Date: late 1930s (original dated 1261–1300)
- Geography: Made in Constantinople (original)
- Culture: Byzantine
- Medium: Paint on canvas
- Dimensions: 12 ft. 11 1/2 in. × 19 ft. 8 7/8 in. (395 × 601.7 cm)
- Classification: Reproductions-Mosaics
- Credit Line: Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1941
- Object Number: 41.137
- Curatorial Department: Medieval Art and The Cloisters
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Byzantine
early 1300s
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