The type of Hosios Cristodoulos, founder of the monastery of Patmos, offering the church to St John the Theologian is a very popular theme, represented in a lot of icons of the Monastery. On the golden ground, in red capital letters is inscribed: Ο ΟΣΙΟΣ ΠΑΤΗΡ ΗΜΩΝ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΔΟΥΛΟΣ. The saint is portrayed full-length, offering a model of a church to the Theologian, while holding a scroll that bears the prayer which must have been composed by a scholar of the Monastery, most probably by the Cretan abbot Nikephoros Chartofylax: ΕΓΩ ΜΕΝ ΑΠΟΣΤΟΛΕ ΤΟΝΔΕ ΤΟΝ ΘΕΙΟΝ ΟΝ ΠΕΡ ΕΔΕΙΝΑΜΗΝ ΣΟΙ ΣΗΚΟΝ ΠΡΟΣΑΓΩ ΑΜΑ ΜΟΝΟΤΡΟΠΟΙΣ ΤΕ ΠΑΣΙ ΤΕ ΑΛΛΟΙΣ ΑΝΩΘΕΝ Δ' ΑΥΤΟΣ ΜΗ ΛΙΠΟΙΣ ΕΠΟΠΤΕΥΕΙΝ ΑΥΤΟΥΣ ΔΙΕΞΑΓΕΙΝ ΤΕ ΠΡΟΣ ΤΟ ΣΥΜΦΕΡΟΝ. The icon is a fine example of Patmian art of the first decades of the 17th century. Even though the Patmian Painters imitated their Cretan colleagues, as seen by the iconographic composition and the lively facial expressions, the scene is rendered somehow coarsely.
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