Handmade icon with the Virgin Mary Glykofilousa in orange background and oval shape. A unique handmade icon with enamel (smalt) made by the brotherhood in the Holy Monastery of Saint Elisavet.
Dimensions: 6.5 x 7 cm.
The image of Theotokos Glykofilousa was property of Victoria, the loyal wife of Simeon's iconoclastic senator. Victoria threw the icon into the see, in order not to surrender it. The image, standing upright in the waves, reached the port of the Monastery of Philotheou. At the point of the coast, where they laid the picture, it smelled like Holy Water. Μore about Theotokos Glykofilousa.
The history of enamel (smalt) is literally dawning many centuries back, while the oldest samples are found in the civilization of Mycenae. The art of the smalt reached its zenith during the Byzantine times (8th – 12th centuries), when it was applied in ecclesiastical, as well as in luxurious items. Through the ages, smalt was considered an expensive and valuable piece of art, which was based on the use of grated glass – mass, colored with various metallic oxides. This mass is placed on a metallic surface and is baked in a special oven in temperature of 600 to 900 C. When the glass mass gets cold, it becomes solid, creating one merged mass with the metal. In that way, smalt can offer us pieces with bright, shining and vivid colors.
