Theotokos

These pictures are a copy of an icon known as the Theotokos of Vladimir. Though I neither knew this or its history. I come to it fresh and took these quick pictures as I was quite enamored by the piece and struck by the artists style of depicting expression and emotion. I love the sorrow and narrowness of style and particularly the geometry the artist used to communicate the foresight of the mother figure, with the richness, roundness and comforting response of the child. It is almost as if the child figure also has foresight, but in looking away from us and only towards his mother, it gives me the impression that he is seeing further into the future and giving her a personal communication to remain strong and faithful to the mysteries and expressing a personal comfort that it will be alright to her, while her eyes, towards us, keep us in the present.
A lot of icons generally depict an almost mature looking child, almost a miniaturized adult in these types of paintings, but I feel the artist here accomplishes a successfully more childlike face that still has a maturity about it.
Even the decay does nothing to diminish the power of the artists work to me.
The other thing that drew me to it is the anamorphic distortion synonymous with this type of art. Even though the area is missing, the child is out of proportion (I suspect he has an elongated neck) and he is almost fish like in the elongations of his arms and torso. But even so, I think it adds to the overall mysticism, as if, from our perspective, we are seeing into a different world and in adjusting to it visually, creates the natural distortion to do so, much like trying to see thru the lens of water.

Legend has it that the portrait of the mother was painted from life by St. Luke. But I think you get a sense of why that legend exists to so many people based on the power and style of the portrait and its wonderfully expressive faces and the contours and depths of the use of light and shadow. Such beautiful ideas and faces looking from, as far as I can find out, the 12th century.