painting. It was restored
by the Istituto Centrale di Restauro, Rome in 1963-1966.
Two other miraculous icons, the Madonna
Eleimonitria and the Madonna of Phileremos, were
of a seemingly inferior quality. The Eleimonitria was
badly shattered during the Second World War and its subsequent
restoration was more in the nature of an approximate reconstruction.
This makes a sound artistic judgement difficult. The Phileremos
Madonna, the most venerated of the three, left the island
with the Knights in 1798 and had a subsequent close association
with the Russian Imperial Family who venerated it in the Winter
Palace at St. Petersburg. It escaped the Revolution of 1917
but vanished in Yugoslavia in 1941. It was only relocated a
couple of years ago in the monastery of Cetigne, Montenegro,
where it awaits the serious study of a Byzantine Art specialist
(39).
A diptych reliquary composed of twenty-five
miniature images assembled together, presumably for the private
devotions of an individual Knight, is preserved at the Cathedral
Museum, Mdina. Paolo Maria Paciaudi, who described and illustrated
it in 1755, called it an "Agiothecum". The images
may, perhaps, be identified, as suggested by Anthony Luttrell,
with the twenty-five seen by the pilgrim Nicolò da Martoni,
in 1395, in the Hospice of St. Catherine on Rhodes, when they
were mounted "in a beautiful cona reliquary surrounded
by inscriptions" (40). The images
are carved in low relief in a soft stone known as steatite.
Nineteen of them are the work of the same artist, or workshop,
and probably formed part of a single set.
The date of the images is unknown. As in the
case of most other Byzantine objets d'art, stylistic
considerations are by themselves insufficient dating tools.
Two enamel armorial shields of the Master Fra Hélion
de Villeneuve (1319-1346), on the post-1530 red velvet covers,
are of dubious interest. The early fourteenth, or perhaps, the
thirteenth centuries are probable, but an earlier date cannot
be excluded. The centre of production is equally unknown. Paul
Hetherington suggests Cyprus where the Knights languished for
fifteen years between the fall of Acre and the definite capture
of Rhodes (41). The style was, however,
widely diffused and Nicolò da Martoni,
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assuming that he was referring to
the same images, was told that they were acquired in Constantinople.
The sixteen images on the right-hand volet
form a homogeneous group. The saints are shown in half figure.
Some are frontally posed but others have their heads slightly
turned in profile. In spite of a certain dignified monumentality
the execution is rather crude. Three other half-length figures
on the left-hand volet are identical in style and workmanship
and obviously belonged to the same set. This distances them
from the remaining six images. One of the latter, a central
Golgotha scene, has technical and iconographic affinities (42),
but betrays westernizing influences and might, in fact, have
been produced separately in a Latinized context, perhaps on
Rhodes itself. Four of the remaining five images show standing
saints. The fifth is a composite scene of the Communion of
St. Mary of Egypt. The iconography of all five is more stylised,
abstracted, and decorative. On a technical level one should
note the use of the drill to enhance and diversify
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| Portable Altar. Red marble
with lucid enamels and rock crystal miniatures. Venice,
14th century. Cathedral Museum, Mdina. Photo credit:
The Marquis Cassar de Sayn. |
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[39] For a history
of the icon before its recent rediscovery: M. Buhagiar in J. Azzopardi
(ed.), op. cit., 20-23.
[40] P.M. Paciaudi, op. cit., 384-399; A.T. Luttrell, op.
cit., 12, 45.
[41] P. Hetherington, "Byzantine
Steatites in the Possession of the Knights of Rhodes", The
Burlington Magazine, vol. CXX. n. 909, December 1978, 819.
[42] Ibid., 811-812. Hetherington suggests on such evidence
that it came from the same workshop as the half-length images.
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