Vita Icon of Saint George with Scenes of His Passion and Miracles

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0:00:04.0 Dr. Beth Harris: We’re at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at a special exhibition, looking at a large painting of Saint George. It’s an interesting painting because we have Saint George in the center, but we have all of these scenes surrounding him.

0:00:20.7 Dr. Evan Freeman: This is what is called an icon, which comes from the Greek word for image. But when we’re talking about the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, the word icon typically refers to images of Christ or angels or saints, like this one. This icon is probably from the early 13th century, and by this time, icons had been around for a long time in Byzantium. But here we see something innovative. We see this combination of a central image with a frame of narrative scenes that surrounds it, and this is typically called a vita icon or biographical icon.

0:00:52.8 Dr. Beth Harris: To me, it seems to combine two very important functions. I have this image of the saint that I can venerate, that I can use in prayer, and then I can also learn about his life, his miracles, the ways that he was tortured for his faith and his death. So I get to learn and have an aid in prayer at the same time.

0:01:16.4 Dr. Evan Freeman: The central image of George is larger. He’s standing, he’s looking out at us, he’s engaging the viewer. And so we can imagine that this is the image towards which viewers directed their prayers. But this is an icon you can really spend time with. You can follow these various scenes around the outside. You can see several images of George being murdered, sacrificing his life for his faith, so there are torture scenes. And then finally, in the lower right, George is being entombed. So this icon makes the saint available to the viewer in the center image, but it also unfolds his whole life. It tells the viewer why this figure is holy, why one might want to direct their prayers to him.

0:01:52.9 Dr. Beth Harris: His face is youthful. He’s got this beautiful curly hair, this sense of transcendence, of triumph, and wearing this elaborate armor that’s got beautiful decorative gold patterning on it.

0:02:07.4 Dr. Evan Freeman: The juxtaposition of the central image with the scenes around, it really creates a paradox because in the middle we see this saint who is mighty, who is a military saint, a warrior. He has a sword strapped to his belt. He’s holding a spear. He has this enormous shield. He’s ready for battle. And on the other hand, he’s highlighted in gold and his clothes look very fine. He’s wearing this beautiful red cape, secured with a brooch, makes him look perhaps less ready for an actual battle, but shows him to be holy, shows him to be regal. Yet in these scenes that surround, we see the saint stripped down. He’s being tortured. And this kind of gets at this fundamental paradox of military saints who were popular in Byzantium. On the one hand, they were soldiers in life. On the other hand, they die for their faith, which shows how they have imitated the example of Christ.

0:02:48.4 Dr. Beth Harris: Much of what we know about Saint George’s life comes from early hagiographies.

0:02:53.8 Dr. Evan Freeman: George is a really old saint. We have many stories about him. He’s said to have been a Roman soldier from the east who was murdered, who was killed for his faith in the 4th century. But there are many legends that sprang up about him. So it was much later that we get the famous story that many people are familiar with, George rescuing a princess from a dragon. And we actually see an image of that in the lower left part of this image. And in later icons, especially in places like Russia, that image of George on a white horse slaying a dragon will become the central image in many icons. But it’s not the case here.

0:03:24.7 Dr. Beth Harris: So we know that this icon comes from the monastery in Sinai, the place where a number of these type of vita icons were preserved.

0:03:35.4 Dr. Evan Freeman: Vita icons present kind of a mystery. We know they appear relatively late in the history of Byzantium, but we don’t really know where they are being produced. We also don’t know how exactly they’re being used. In the case of this icon, we have a depiction of the donor, the patron, who paid for this icon to be created. And he appears as a smaller figure with his hands upraised in a gesture of prayer. He’s dressed in white, he wears a monk’s hat, and he wears the epitrachelion, or stole, which is basically a sash of a priest, which hangs down in front of his body.

0:04:04.0 Dr. Beth Harris: And he identifies himself as John from Georgia.

0:04:07.9 Dr. Evan Freeman: And so we don’t know if this was a monk who created this icon and brought it to Saint Catherine’s at Mount Sinai as a pilgrim to give it to the monastery, or if John was a monk at Saint Catherine’s monastery and if this icon was from the beginning created at and for the monastery, perhaps hung in a chapel at Saint Catherine’s. Saint Catherine’s was a very ancient monastery that remained through the centuries a popular destination for pilgrim. So it drew people from all over the Christian world and beyond.

0:04:36.2 Dr. Beth Harris: This was a place where Moses encountered God.

0:04:39.5 Dr. Evan Freeman: It’s a sacred site for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. And so one theory is that vita icons like this could be used by a multi-ethnic multilingual audience who perhaps didn’t share the same language, but could see the story of the saint told in pictures.

0:04:55.7 Dr. Beth Harris: And as we stand back from the icon, I’m noticing especially how that gold halo glistens.

0:05:03.0 Dr. Evan Freeman: Something that icons like this are designed to do really well is to reflect the light from windows, and the flickering candlelight, or light from oil lamps that illuminated churches and that burnished halo would’ve really drawn viewers attention to the face of the saint.

0:05:18.2 Dr. Beth Harris: We’ve been talking about this as a Byzantine icon, but this format was also popular in Italy.

0:05:26.1 Dr. Evan Freeman: While this format of the vita icon appears relatively late in the history of Byzantine art, and in early examples depicts old, well-established saints, it’s quickly adopted in places like Italy where it is used to depict relatively new saints like Saint Francis who dies in 1226 and vita icons of Francis appear just a few decades later. Vita icons also go on to appear in places like Russia, where they also depict comparatively recent saints like Prince Vladimir or Boris and Gleb. The way that the icon makes the saint present, that central portrait, and at the same time tells the story of the saint’s life, it’s not hard to imagine why this kind of an image would become so popular.

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