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Russia, ca. 19th century CE. An impressive composition depicting an emotional rendition of the mass martyrdom of Sebaste, finely painted in egg tempera and gold leaf on wood, the scene surrounded by a beautiful polychrome raised border that was painstakingly adorned with a floral design. While many icons address the martyrdom of particular saints, icons presenting imagery of mass martyrdoms are quite rare. Perhaps the most famous of these tragic stories is the Martyrs of Sebaste depicted on this example. Size: 24.25" W x 14" H (61.6 cm x 35.6 cm)

The backstory behind the iconography of this scene is as follows. Forty Roman legionnaires refused to renounce their faith. As a consequence, Emperor Licinius ordered these Christian soldiers to be exposed naked on a frozen lake near Sebaste, where they eventually froze to death. In this example, the artist poignantly captures the martyrs’ suffering as they clutch their bodies, shivering in the cold. The men cling together, and face one another as a gesture of mutual support and compassion, in their final moments. In the center one martyr holds a fellow martyr’s collapsing body as others look on and make caring gestures of charity. To their left, one legionnaire is fleeing to the city of Sebaste, his body half-way through the city gates. Above them and beneath Christ in Majesty are the forty golden crowns the martyrs will receive from Christ after their horrific ordeal.

The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste or the Holy Forty were a group of Roman soldiers in the Legio XII Fulminata (Armed with Lightning) whose martyrdom in 320 for the Christian faith is recounted in traditional martyrologies. They were killed near the city of Sebaste (present-day Sivas in Turkey), in Lesser Armenia, victims of the persecutions of Licinius, who after 316, persecuted the Christians of the East. The earliest account of their existence and martyrdom is given by Bishop Basil of Caesarea (370–379) in a homily he delivered on their feast day. The Feast of the Forty Martyrs is thus older than Basil himself, who eulogised them only fifty or sixty years after their deaths.



Exhibited in "Windows Into Heaven: Russian Icons from the Lilly and Francis Robicsek Collection of Religious Art" at the Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina (December 20, 2003 through February 22, 2004) which presented highlights of one of the world's great artistic traditions through an extraordinary group of sixty-five 18th and 19th century Russian icons on loan from the private collection of Lilly and Francis Robicsek.

Icons (icon means "image" in Greek) are sacred objects within the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. Found in homes as well as churches, these painted images depict holy persons and saints as well as illustrate scenes from the Scriptures. Some icons are encased in precious metal covers (oklads) adorned with pearls and semi-precious stones or glass-fronted wooden cases (kiots). Icons are not worshiped, but are instead venerated for their ability to focus the power of an individual's prayer to God. As such they are truly "windows into heaven."

The “Windows Into Heaven” exhibition profiled a magnificent chapter of Russian artistry, the embrace of the Russian Orthodox faith of religious icons during the Romanov centuries. The Russian religious faith was an offshoot of Byzantine Christianity, which in 1054 parted ways from Roman Catholicism. Icons were and continue to be religious images created for veneration. As a focus for prayers and meditation for believers, icons serve as “windows into heaven.”

Provenance: Ex-Lilly and Francis Robicsek Collection of Religious Art, Charlotte, NC; exhibited at Mint Museum of Art "Windows Into Heaven", Charlotte, North Carolina (December 20, 2003 through February 22, 2004)

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#119544

Nice craquelure to the surface. Age cracks and pigment/gilt losses as shown. Some losses to the wood, particularly at the peripheries. Back slats/cross members intact. Mint museum label on verso.