The Entry into Jerusalem

This panel belongs to a set, one scene from the round of 12 great feasts that an Orthodox church shows in a row above the main icons. It is Palm Sunday. Christ rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, days before his arrest, while the crowd spreads cloaks and cut branches on the road and, in many versions, children climb the trees to break off more. The donkey matters. A king entering in triumph would come on a horse, and the choice of the smaller animal was read from the start as a deliberate sign of humility. Painted around 1501, an icon like this was brought out each spring on the Sunday before Easter, which Bulgarians call Tsvetnitsa, the feast of flowers. At one side the gate of the city stands open, the place the whole procession is moving toward.