Christ Pantocrator

By 1601 the Bulgarian lands had been under Ottoman rule for more than two centuries, and a painted panel like this was one of the few places the Orthodox faith could still speak in pictures. Christ Pantocrator means Ruler of All, and the type barely shifts from one icon to the next. He faces you head on, raises his right hand in blessing, and holds a closed Gospel in the left. The letters set beside his head, IC XC, are the Greek shorthand for Jesus Christ, kept in Greek even here in a Slavic church. Worked in egg tempera on wood, an image like this hung where a worshipper would meet Christ's gaze first, at eye level near the doors of the sanctuary.