A miraculous icon of virgin Hodegetria with twelve great feast scenes (third quarter of the fourteenth century) from Nessebur, Bulgaria

Abstract

In this article a miraculous icon of the Virgin Hodegetria with twelve Great Feast (Dodekaorton) scenes (third quarter of the fourteenth c.) in the church of the Dormition of the Virgin in Nessebur (Mesembria) in Bulgaria is presented. The icon, which belongs to the category of inlaid icons, bears a silver revetment (eighteenth-nineteenth c.). The iconography, as well as the style and the technique of painting, seems closely related to the Palaeologan icons of the second and mainly the third quarter of the fourteenth century. This allows us to suppose that the main icon, as well as the framing icon, are works of anonymous painters, probably from a painting workshop of Constantinople or a local one, influenced or formed in the Byzantine capital.

Keywords

• icon
• fourteenth century
• virgin hodegetria
• great feast scenes
• nessebur
• black sea