painted in tempera and gold on wood for the Levantine Melkite Christian market, centred by The Crucifixtion flanked by angels collecting the Blood of Christ, the Evangelists in the shaped terminals, each titled in Greek to top John, Mark, Luke and Matthew holding open their Gospels in Arabic script, all in a corded border, shaped foliate rim and ball terminals, 127.5 x 98.5cm

Provenance: Nikki Constable-Maxwell (1920-2016) by whom bequeathed to the vendor.

American born Militza (known as Nikki) Kerkes married Andrew Constable-Maxwell OBE MC (1906-1990) in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of the Vatican Basilica on 26 February 1949. Originally a London merchant banker, Andrew Constable-Maxwell moved to the Vaud canton near Geneva after the war. The couple were great collectors, amassing among other things the ‘Constable-Maxwell Collection of Ancient Glass: The Property of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Constable-Maxwell’, sold by Sotheby’s, London, 4/5 June 1979, which included a famously twice record-breaking diatretum (Roman lamp or cage cup).

This imposing liturgical cross belongs to the late Cretan School, the dominant centre of Orthodox icon production in the eastern Mediterranean during the 16th century. The restrained treatment of the Crucifixion reflects the conservative Byzantine aesthetic (the maniera greca) cultivated in Venetian Candia (Crete), where workshops produced icons on a large scale for export throughout the Mediterranean world, peaking in the sixteenth century. The elongated figure of Christ, rendered with schematised musculature, almond-shaped eyes and the use of white highlights in the face, demonstrates close familiarity with the style of Emmanuel Lombardos (also found as Lambardos or Lampardos), one of the leading painters of the late Cretan School. While not necessarily attributable to the master himself, the present work certainly aligns with his practice. The absence of Baroque anatomical exaggeration or theatrical agony supports a date in the final decades of the 16th century, prior to the increasing Western influence visible in Cretan painting of the early 17th century.

Cretan icons circulated widely across the eastern Mediterranean, including the Levant, where they were readily adopted by Arabic-speaking Orthodox communities, known as Melkite Christians. In some cases painters themselves travelled east: Ieremias Palladas, a Cretan monk and icon painter associated with Saint Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai, is documented as producing works for Sinai, the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and a church in Bethlehem. Large crosses of this scale were intended for prominent ecclesiastical settings, most likely as altar crosses within a major Orthodox church or monastic foundation.