Ikoon: Christ Pantocrator

Ek deel die ontdekking oor die ikoon Christ Pontocrator. Indien jy meer wil lees volg gerus die skakel na

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Pantocrator waar ek hierdie brokkie geleen het. Soos die tyd dit toelaat stuur ek dalk meer gereeld enige ontdekkings. Hierdie ikoon lê my persoonlik na aan die hart aangesien ek die klooster daar aan die voet van Sinai besoek het en kon deelhê aan 'n Mass (waarvan ek nie 'n woord verstaan het nie en daarom het die prentjies en rituele en kniel-gebede baie beteken). Wat my nog altyd van die ikoon opgeval het is die twee helftes van die gesig wat verskil. Lees hier om die betekenis te verstaan.


Gedagtes waaroor jy dalk kan mediteer/bid/reflekteer terwyl jy na hierdie ikoon kyk, is dalk:· Jesus se Godheid-Mensheid
· Jesus die orator en onderwyser – hoe gewillig is jy om na Hom te luister?
· Hoe leerbaar is jy?

The oldest known icon of Christ Pantocrator, encaustic on panel (Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai). The two different facial expressions on either side emphasize Christ's dual nature as fully God and fully human.

The iconic image of Christ Pantocrator was one of the first images of Christ developed in the Early Christian Church and remains a central icon of the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the half-length image, Christ holds the New Testament in his left hand and makes the gesture of teaching or of blessing with his right.

The oldest known surviving example of the icon of Christ Pantocrator was painted in encaustic on panel in the sixth or seventh century, and survived the period of destruction of images during the Iconoclastic disputes that twice racked the Eastern church, 726 to 787 and 814 to 842, by being preserved in the remote desert of the Sinai, in Saint Catherine's Monastery. The gessoed panel, finely painted using a wax medium on a wooden panel, had been coarsely overpainted around the face and hands at some time around the thirteenth century. It was only when the overpainting was cleaned in 1962 that the ancient image was revealed to be a very high quality icon, probably produced in Constantinople. The subtlety, immediacy and realism of the image are immediately apparent when the image is compared to any of the more familiar stiffened and hieratic icons — following the same model — that were painted after iconoclasm had been decisively rejected. Christ here is Christ the Teacher: the gesture of Christ's right hand is not the gesture of blessing, but the orator's gesture; the identical gesture is to be seen in a panel from an ivory diptych of an enthroned vice-prefect, a Rufius Probianus, ca 400, of which Peter Brown remarks, "With his hand he makes the 'orator's gesture' which indicates that he is speaking, or that he has the right to speak."