Picture in Focus: Icon of the Savior Made Without Hands by Ulyana Tomkevych

August 12, 2018

Picture in Focus: Icon of the Savior Made Without Hands by Ulyana Tomkevych

My travels last month took me to Lviv, Ukraine, where I found this week's featured face of Jesus at an exhibit of recent works by Ulyana Tomkevych at the ICONART Contemporary Sacred Art Gallery. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic icon-maker offers us a striking contemporary variation in the round on an ancient prototype of a miraculous image of Jesus known as the Savior Made Without Hands. According to tradition, the ailing King Abgar of Edessa sent an emissary to Christ in Galilee, asking him to come to the Syrian city to heal him. Jesus wiped his face with a towel and sent the holy image created there to cure the sick monarch. Tomkevych uses the traditional blue and red color palette associated with imagery of Christ in subtle, expressive ways and reshapes the cloth on which the holy image miraculously appeared into the Cross. Her interpretation of the Christ of Edessa prototype can be viewed  in the gallery of the New Iconography of Lviv page in the Schools of Sacred Art section. Its coming to the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection just happens to coincide with the feast day of the Icon of the Savior Made Without Hands, celebrated in Eastern Christian churches on August 16. (John Kohan)