Double-Sided Pendant Icon with the Virgin and Christ Pantokrator

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This pendant is one of the most beautiful and technically accomplished personal devotional objects to survive from Byzantium. On one side Christ Pantokrator (Ruler of All) blesses the viewer with his right hand and holds the Gospel book in his left. Christ gazes to the side, acknowledging the prayers of the Virgin on the reverse. The surrounding gold ground recalls the shimmering surface that frames images of the Pantokrator in the domes of middle Byzantine churches. The Virgin, shown in three-quarter profile, raises her hands in prayer to her son in heaven on behalf of the pendant’s owner. Her pose is modeled on a famous icon of the Virgin known as the Virgin Hagiosoritissa, or Virgin of the Holy Soros (Relic).

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Metropolitan Museum of Art