The Hodegetria Icon of Lefkosia (Late 12th century AD)

Hodegetria icon in Lefkosia

Title: Theotokos Hodegetria (Mother of God Who Shows the Way)

Artist Name: Unknown Byzantine Master

Genre: Religious Icon

Date: Late 12th century AD

Materials: Egg tempera and gold leaf on wood panel

Location: Byzantine Museum of the Archbishop Makarios III Foundation, Lefkosia (Nicosia), Cyprus

In a world that constantly recedes into ephemeral representations and the easy emotions of the gaze, the icon of the Theotokos Hodegetria, an enigmatic work of the late 12th century, retains in a paradoxical manner the capacity to call—not merely to provoke—the viewer to participation. It is not solely an object, nor simply a monument; it is a body fashioned to reveal the ineffable, a point where the present of matter transitions into a present purified from time.

Without revealing the name of its creator, the icon, now housed in the Byzantine Museum of the Holy Archbishopric of Cyprus, bears nonetheless the anonymous signature of Theology. For it is not sufficient to say that it depicts; it reveals, that is, it breaks the conceptual surfaces of the world to show that which remains unseen in everyday perception: The Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The Virgin is depicted as ‘the Hodegetria’—not didactically but mysteriwise. While she bears the Divine Infant with her left hand, with the right she points to him; a simple gesture, and yet an entire theology. As Dachev underscores, this gesture transforms the Virgin into a psychic guide from this world to the other. Christ, with a countenance more manly than childlike, blesses and holds the scroll—not as a symbol of archaism, but as a sign of the Incarnation of the Logos. The human skin, here, bears the resplendent vibration of God.

The very iconographic austerity of the Virgin’s form coexists—or rather, intertwines—with an almost imperceptible inclination of the head, something like an informal concession to human pain; a loving word without reason. Thus, Kalavrezou well sees that ineffable quality “between the hieratic and the intimate”, where the Byzantine mindset is suspended—it has no need to choose.

 

Theology in Colours

Gold, present not as an ornament but as a radiance of the Uncreated, shapes a timeless existence of the figures. There is no natural depth here—only the unfathomable depth of divine proximity. The illumination, when it falls upon the surface of the icon, does not simply reveal the material, but transforms the viewer into a participating person.

The technique of the painter—through egg tempera and thin layers of flesh tones—does not attempt realism. It attempts revelation. From the earthen tones emerges not a corporeal substance but a vibratory form of light—from within. The face of the Theotokos, as bearing not light but a light-giving principle, becomes a gate of perception. There, where time has etched fissures, the testimony blossoms: the use, the worship, the veneration.

And the maphorion? Azure, deep, almost nocturnal. Perhaps dyed from lapis lazuli, it bears upon it not only the human nature of the Virgin, but also the blaze of the divine vision, through the fine golden lines—not realistic, not stylistic; but as indications of energy, of power and of participation.

 

The Gaze as a Vision of Truth

It is not recognised, it is not explained; but it sees. The Theotokos in the Hodegetria does not look at but reads the faithful—and indeed within them. Her gaze does not aim at a physical space; it touches a double epoch: the expectation and the fullness. The Passion—already known from the outset; the Resurrection—as a given final reversal of human sorrow.

As Stephanie Rumpza observes, the West often saw in the icons “not Theology, but visible superstition” (Gr. οὐχὶ Θεολογίαν, ἀλλὰ δεισιδαιμονίαν ὁρατὴν)—often as remnants of popular ignorance. Yet the Byzantine practice is a mystical phenomenology: the depicted is not represented; it is present. Not as a figure but as a presence.

And this presence passes by necessity through a geometry. The frame—not a margin but a border of the sacred. And the marks of time, the cracks and the damages, function not as threats but as testaments; as if they had been engraved by the lips of prayers.

 

Understanding or Transubstantiation?

If modern art often seeks to break the frame of representation, the Byzantine icon negates it from the beginning. The golden background, the lack of perspective, the deliberate distortion of proportions—all these do not constitute limitations, but spiritual means. If the eye seeks naturalistic truth, the icon discourages it. It insists: the sight is an unnarratable event, an encounter, a transmutation.

 

Eschatological Finale

Time works upon the icon not as decay, but as a teacher. The Hodegetria does not withdraw into a safe antiquity; it insists on being present. Not for the purpose of consolation but of awakening. Not to show, but to be the way.

In her silence, she continues to speak. And her voice—her gaze—remains an uncreated call to him who would wish to pass from the visage of matter to the sunken certainty of the unseen.