Longin’s icon from Sofia

Abstract

The paper discusses an icon of the enthroned Mother of God with Christ, St. Nicholas, and St. John the Baptist in the National Archaeological Institute with Museum - Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (NAIM - BAS) in Sofia. The icon was previously dated to the fifteenth-sixteenth or fourteenth century. We propose its attribution to Longin, a renowned Serbian painter from the second half of the sixteenth century. This attribution is explained by the striking similarities of the stylistic characteristics and most iconographic elements of the Sofia icon with those of the painter’s signed works. The icon must have made its way to Sofia from the southern parts of Kosovo and Metohija, where it was probably created.

Keywords

• painter longin
• icon-painting
• serbian medieval art
• sixteenth century
• virgin with christ child
• iconography
• kosovo and metohija