Sinai goes to Greece

Nine unique icons from St Catherine's monastery in Sinai are now on display in Athens, along with an illustrated manuscript. Nevine El-Aref describes the masterpieces
Two icons from the 6th-century showing (left) Christ Pantocrator and (right) John the Baptist, from the St Catherine's collection
The exhibition currently on show at the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens features more than 100 icons and manuscripts from the Hermitage in St Petersburg, the Benaki Museum in Cyprus, the Vatican and St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai. The impressive exhibition, which will run until mid-August, is staged in the central hall of the museum, where special lighting has been arranged in order to show each masterpiece to the best advantage. The exhibition is entitled "Mystery Great and Strange,", and the selected pieces date from the early Byzantine era (the 4th to the 7th centuries) to the Ottoman period (14th to the 17th centuries). It includes nine icons from St Catherine's.
Abdallah El-Attar, head of the Islamic and Coptic department at the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that among the most important icons on exhibition were two 6th-century works painted on wood. "One features the Saviour, the other John the Baptist, and their significance lies in the fact that they date to an early period, and also that they survived the period of iconoclasm," he said.
The former, a painting of Christ Pantocrator, is one of the oldest and best preserved in the monastery. This icon, which measures 84cms by 45.5cms, was for a long time believed to date from the 13th century, but when this was cleaned it was found to have been painted over a much earlier piece. The Christ it revealed was painted using the encaustic technique, in which bees-wax is applied with a spatula. Christ, robed in a purple tunic, holds a jewel-studded copy of the Gospels in his left hand, while his right is raised in blessing. It appears that the halo surrounding his head at one time was adorned with a cross and with a row of decorative beads around its circumference.
The rich period of icon painting under the Emperor Justinian -- who constructed the Church of the Transfiguration -- and his immediate successors made Sinai one of the world's icon centres, where a substantial number of important icons executed in encaustic have been preserved. That of John the Baptist, though not in such good condition, shows the saint in a brown tunic and mantle with a sheepskin. Two small medallions, of Christ and the Virgin Mary, can be identified at the top of the panel.
Sinai was open to Christianity at large, and colonies of monks from other churches resided there at various times. As a result, icons painted there show Greek, Syriac and Arabic inscriptions, as well as some with Slavic -- chiefly Russian -- influence.
With such a wide range of icons to choose from, it was extremely difficult to select those to send to Athens. They include two of the Virgin and Child; one of them with scenes of the Annunciation, and depictions of the Crucifixion and of the foot-washing ritual.
As for selecting the manuscripts, this too presented a challenge. The library of St Catherine's Monastery, which achieved world fame in the 1840s, when Constantine Tischendorf discovered on its shelves one of the oldest and almost complete 4th century manuscripts of the Holy Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus. The collection numbers more than 2,000 manuscripts in Greek, and hundreds in other languages. Those chosen for Athens include a gift presented by Gregory of Nazianzuz to the monastery, a manuscript of 414 illuminated pages with an elaborately-adorned silver cover on the upper edge of which are two angels and images of Matthew, Mark Luke and John.
Most of the icons native to the monastery were created between the 6th and 15h centuries, and follow a style which has come to be known as the "Sinaitic School" of art. The imagery of this period reflects Sinai's biblical landscape. The school became so influential that many European artists incorporated elements of Sinai's mountainous terrain into their own compositions.
As the monastery's influence spread throughout the Christian world, its art collection was supplemented by generous offerings from abroad. Russian Czars made significant donations, as did leaders from Crete, Constantinople and Palestine. As a result the collection of icons at the monastery today is second in size only to the Vatican's. Perhaps the handful that made their way to Athens will tempt more enthusiasts to Sinai.
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