A winged St John the Baptist icon in the British Museum

Apollo, Nov, 2003 by Angeliki Lymberopoulou

A large icon measuring 89 x 64 cm, now in the Department of Prehisory and Europe at the British Museum, depicts a winged St John the Baptist in the Desert (Fig. 1). The panel consists of two separate pieces of wood--the right one is much wider than the left (42 cm and 22 cm respectively)--held together with two wooden pegs which are visible on its reverse. This side of the narrow piece of wood bears two recesses, while two modern hinges have also been added here. Traces of fabric are still visible between the ground and the wood support. A label on the back, attached when the icon was in the possession of the Temple Gallery, London, describes it as 'St John the Forerunner, Byzantine or Cretan, c. 1500'.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The icon depicts a tall, thin, winged and haloed St John the Baptist in the desert, full-length and in three-quarter view to the left. He wears a blue camel-hair skin underneath an olive-green himation. His hair is dishevelled and curly in its lower part, as is his straggly beard. His wings, spread wide on his back, are blue on the inside matching his camel-hair skin, and brown on the outside. With his left hand he supports over his left shoulder a staff topped by a cross, and holds an open scroll with an inscription written in black in Greek capitals. The text reads as follows:

[ARABIC TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ('You see what they suffer, O Word of God, those who condemn the faults of the loathsome, and therefore, Herod, not being able to bear my condemnation, severed my head, Saviour').

With a gesture indicative of speech, his right arm is extended to the left and bent at the elbow towards the upper left hand corner of the icon, where Christ is depicted in half length. Christ appears within a segment of heaven, in three quarter view to the right, and confers the sign of blessing on John with his right hand. He wears a golden himation and bears a plain (i.e. not cruciform) halo, to the right of which the gold, Greek capital letters 'XC' are visible. The background of this segment is dark blue with gold striations, surrounded by a light blue band. Two ranges of grey mountains dominate the background flanking John: a large one to the left and a smaller one to the right, rendered in the typical Byzantine manner, that is, unnaturally steep and with flat surfaces attached to each other at right angles. In the bottom left-hand corner, the remains of a small plant can be glimpsed, as well as an inscription, now severely damaged, which is only partially decipherable, and reads: [ARABIC TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ('prayer of the servant'). Although the condition of the icon is generally good, it is obvious that it has been cut down. At the right, it is just the lower parts of John's left wing which are missing; however, at the bottom, as mentioned above, both the plant and the inscription have been truncated, along with the Baptist's feet, while at the left, judging from other icons depicting the same subject, the mountain range presumably extended further. There is no indication that the icon has been significantly cropped at the top, although on the upper part of the border, to the left, the golden background is missing, as it is in part on the left and right edges. The undertone of John's and Christ's flesh is dark brown with reddish highlights on the forehead, cheeks, neck, and on John's bare arm and hands.

The British Museum icon is a characteristic example of the popular post-Byzantine iconographic type of the winged St John the Baptist. Although the possibility of a Komnenian prototype has been suggested (the Komnenian dynasty ruled in Constantinople between 1081 and 1185) (1) the image is actually inspired by prototypes dating from the Palaiologan period, which lasted flora 1259 to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. (2) This type became extremely popular, and was widely disseminated in post-Byzantine Cretan icon painting from the second half of the fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century. (3) It is generally accepted that it was introduced into post-Byzantine Cretan icon painting by the leading artist Angelos, whose two signed icons with the winged St John are considered the first examples in what was to become a rich line of production (Figs. 2 and 3). (4) Based on the surviving examples, the main characteristics of the type may be defined as follows: the winged saint in three-quarter profile, facing either to the right or to the left, conversing with Christ and clad in a camel-hair shirt with a himation, (5) holding a staff and an open scroll, with the same dodecasyllabic text seen in our icon; two mountain ranges, a tree with an axe; the severed head of the Baptist in a bowl; and, occasionally, a turtle-dove (Fig. 2). (6) It is, therefore, likely that our icon originally had a tree with an axe and a bowl with John's head, elements which are invariably included in icons of this type. The tree with an axe is inspired by the Gospel according to St Matthew, Chapter III, verse 10, and the Gospel according to St Luke, Chapter III, verse 9 ('And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire'), (7) while the bowl with the Baptist's head is a reference not only to his beheading (Gospel according to St Matthew, Chapter XIV, verses 1-12; Gospel according to St Mark, Chapter VI, verses 16 29), but also to the feast of the Finding of the Baptist's Head, (8) and, moreover, has liturgical connotations. (9) In the majority of the surviving examples, John holds his staff--a symbol which, according to Schwartz, alludes to his martyrdom (10)--in his left hand, in front of him and upright, as seen, for example, in the Angelos icons (Figs. 2 and 3). Nevertheless, examples where the Baptist, in a more naturalistic manner, rests his staff on his left shoulder, as seen in our icon, also exist (Fig. 4). The words on the scroll, common in this iconographic type, are not, however, found in any textual source. Moreover, they do not appear either in earlier depictions of the winged Baptist or in any of his other iconographic types. (11) This, together with its limited use, strongly suggests that the text was especially composed for the scroll of the Baptist in images of this type, (12) and it has been pro posed that the painter Angelos could have also been responsible for its wording.