Picture in Focus: The Virgin Who Shows the Way by Lyuba Yatskiv

May 27, 2018

Picture in Focus: The Virgin Who Shows the Way by Lyuba Yatskiv

My art festival of new Marian images for the month of May from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection comes to a close this week with a splendid new icon of the Madonna and Child by Ukrainian Greek Catholic Artist Lyuba Yatskiv. The icon-maker from Lviv in West Ukraine offers us a contemporary variation on the time-honored iconographic prototype of the Virgin Who Shows the Way, where Mary directs us with her long-fingered right hand to worship the Christ Child, whom she tenderly cradles in her left arm. The traditional color palette of red and blue has been replaced here by warm fire and earth tones. Instead of a the usual scroll, Christ holds a bunch of grapes, a Eucharistic motif repeated in the decorative band of wheat stalks on the Virgin Mary's inner garment. This new icon is a companion piece to an image of Christ, the Ruler of All in the gallery of the New Iconography of Lviv page in the Schools of Sacred Art section. (John Kohan)