Deisis

Deisis is a Greek word for a plea, and this panel is built entirely around one. Christ sits at the center as ruler and judge, and the two figures who flank him, his mother Mary and John the Baptist, turn their bodies inward and lift their hands toward him. They are not looking out at you. They are interceding, asking mercy on behalf of everyone else, which is why this same grouping holds the central tier of a Bulgarian iconostasis, the screen of images that stands between the congregation and the altar. It was painted in 1501, when these lands had been under Ottoman rule for more than a century and there was no longer an Orthodox emperor anywhere near. The image of Christ enthroned kept that older order in view. The hands of Mary and John, open and lifted rather than folded, are the oldest way Orthodox art had of showing a prayer said for someone other than yourself.