Byzantine and Christian Museum :: Permanent exhibition .::. IV. From Byzantium to Modern Era .::. IV.3δ. Monasteries: flowering and brilliance
Fragment of a wall-painting with head of a saint (01744)
Exhibition room: IV.3δ Monasteries: flowering and brilliance
Date: 16th c.
Dimensions (cm): 34 Χ 28
Provenance: Constamonitou Monastery, Mount Athos
The fragment of wall-painting bears the head of an unidentified saint, probably a monk. It is the only section of wall-painting saved from the decoration in the Refectory of the Constamonitou Monastery on Mount Athos, which burnt down in the second half of the 16th century. The high quality of the painting on the fragment, the iconographic and stylistic similarities with corresponding representations in other Athonite monasteries, and above all the comparison with saints from wall-paintings in Stavronikita Monastery, also on Athos, have led scholars to link this wall-painting with the great Cretan mural and icon painter Theophanes Strelitza Bathas, who worked at Meteora and Athos in the 16th century.