Epitaphios

This image of the dead Christ is worked entirely in gold and coloured silk thread, an embroidered cloth called an epitaphios. In the Orthodox rite it isn't hung on a wall. On Good Friday it is carried in procession, then laid out flat so the faithful can bow to it and kiss it, standing in for the shroud that wrapped the body and for the tomb itself. The date given here is 1380, the last years of the medieval Bulgarian kingdom, only a few years before Ottoman armies took Sofia and then the royal capital at Tarnovo. An image this fine in metal thread took months of patient handwork, and the gold was chosen so it would catch the candlelight as the cloth was carried slowly through the church.