Picture in Focus: Vera Icon by Tyrus Clutter

March 18, 2018

Picture in Focus: Vera Icon by Tyrus Clutter

American Graphic Artist Tyrus Clutter created this week's new image from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, recalling a moment in Christ's journey to Calvary not found in the Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion but commemorated in the Roman Catholic devotion of the Stations of the Cross. At the sixth "stop" in this traditional cycle of fourteen prayers remembering the events of Good Friday, a pious woman of Jerusalem wipes the face of the Cross-bearing Jesus and later finds his image miraculously imprinted on the cloth. She has come to be known as Veronica, a variation of the Latin for "true icon" used in the title. The portrait of Christ takes shape here from overlapping language fragments taken from a Catholic Stations of the Cross devotional text imprinted with a polyester lithographic plate on an antique piece of linen. This unusual piece of textile text art can be found in the Tyrus Clutter profile page in the Sacred Artists section. (John Kohan)