Madonna & Child
Mounted on wood 3.5cm x 7cm - Replica
In the Italo-Cretan period, when icon painters on the island of Crete provided images both for Eastern Orthodox and Italian Roman Catholic buyers, a related Marian "Passion" image became popular, still with the two angels, but with the figures of Mary and the child Jesus in different positions than in the Arakiotissa. Here is an example of that type by the famous Cretan iconographer Andreas Ritzos (1421-1492):
Note that the angels are not depicted below their torsos, as though coming out of nowhere.
The identifying elements of this type are the two angels with the implements of the Passion, the child Jesus turning his head sharply over his left shoulder to look at the Archangel Gabriel, and the sandal that has come loose from his right foot and hangs slightly below it
Many writers like to say that the sandal has become loose because of the child's abrupt jerk of fear on seeing the cross, but it is perhaps just a pleasant painter's conceit.
Some painters also included the crown of thorns with the cross.
One image of this type became famous in Rome after it was brought there at the end of the 1400s. Tradition says it was taken from Crete by an Italian merchant who stole it on the island, but then gave it to the San Matteo church in Rome. It became known as the "Madonna di San Matteo." It disappeared from view when the French invaded Rome in 1812, and was gone for over forty years, but then was found in an Augustinian oratory in the 1860s. The rediscovered image caught the attention of Pope Pius IX, who had known it in San Matteo as a boy. He accorded it great importance, which led to its eventually becoming a well-known Catholic printed paper reproduction found on the walls of many Catholic homes. It was by then known as Nostra Signora del Perpetuo Soccorso in Italian, or in English "Our Lady of Perpetual Succor." It is more commonly known in the United States as "Our Lady of Perpetual Help." The image has undergone restoration twice, first in 1866 and again in 1940, which perhaps accounts for its rather bland present appearance.
