The Holy Virgin Hodegetria with Prophets

The Virgin holds the Christ child on one arm and points to him with her free hand. That gesture is the whole meaning of this type, the Hodegetria, which means 'she who shows the way'. She points away from herself, toward the child as the road to salvation. What sets this panel apart is the ring of figures around the edge. These are Old Testament prophets, each holding a scroll, the men who long before had foretold that a virgin would bear a son. Border and centre answer each other: the promise written on the scrolls, and the promise kept, held in her arms. It was painted in 1566, deep in the Ottoman centuries, when Bulgarian workshops kept these old Byzantine forms alive in wood and tempera.