The Nativity of the Virgin
Type:
Icon
Period:
1907 year
Dimmensions (cm):
74
/ 46
/ 3.5
Location
Country: Bulgaria
Province: Blagoevgrad
Village: Luki
Church: The Virgin
Source
Country: Bulgaria
Province: Blagoevgrad
Village: Luki
Church: The Virgin
Description
The composition is one of many figures. Painted are Saint Anne (to the left), seated on a plank-bed, supported by her made-servants, and Joachim the Righteous One to the right, in her feet at her bed. Kneeling in the foreground, down below and on the right-hand side of the composition, is a maid-servant, bathing the baby Mary. The scene is laid in a room, painted quite conventionally, without any other details whatsoever in the interior.
Iconographical technique: Combined
The technique of painting is a distemper, with a quantity of drying oil added in the vehicle. The layer of the painting is thin, at some places a velatura, of a granular structure, owing to the poor quality of the pigments. The modelling is rough and unskillful. The varnish cover is laid evenly. The gilding is on bole with gold-leaf.
Base material: Wood
The icon's base is a one-piece softwood panel with two inserted beams. It is vertically extended by means of an additionally inserted lath, probably because of the place where the icon had stood. The ground coat is of plaster. It is thickly laid, but is not well smoothed. Liquid bronze had been used in the ornamental frame of the painting..
State, restoration traces and comments
There are traces of a previous restorative intervention on the icon's frame, done with oil paint. The varnish cover is laid thinly and had grown dark in the course of time. Written in the left lower corner is a donor's inscription, giving the exact date of the icon and the names of the iconographer and of the donor.
