Picture in Focus: Christ of Edessa Icon by Arsen Bereza

August 19, 2018

Picture in Focus: Christ of Edessa Icon by Arsen Bereza

 In my continuing series on new faces of Jesus in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, I have a second icon of the Savior Made Without Hands to display this week by another representative of the new school of iconography in Lviv, Ukraine. Arsen Bereza works with "found objects," painting his version of the miraculous image of Christ sent to heal the Syrian King of Edessa on a piece of recycled wood. This face of Jesus is modelled on the famous 15th century Christ of Zvenigorod icon, attributed to the sainted Russian Orthodox Iconographer, Andrei Rublev, which was rescued in damaged condition from a firewood pile a few years after the icon-wrecking campaign of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Looking at Bereza's haunting variation of the Rublev Christ on splintered wood, now on view on the New Iconography of Lviv page in the Schools of Sacred Art section, you can easily understand why this iconographic portrait of Jesus with its own miraculous rescue tale to tell has become a favorite of both Eastern and Western Christians. (John Kohan)