6.01.2004

I have a little souvenir icon (glued on particle board, the kind of thing you might find in a museum gift shop), which Elena Shvarts sent me once. She said it's St. Michael (& that "he will protect me"), but the image is clearly derived from the great byzantine Angel Gabriel icon, which the Met is using on its catalogue cover (shown at the link below).

(Now I see it is Michael, though. He's holding a sword, rather than a red wand (as in the Gabriel icon), and "Archangel Michael" is written in cyrillic over the top. But the figure is definitely derived from the earlier icon.)

No comments: