The Holy Virgin, Sovereign Lady of Life

The title names an actual place. Outside the walls of Constantinople stood a spring whose water was believed to heal. The story tells of a soldier named Leo who was shown the hidden source and later became emperor, and who built a church over it, so that for centuries pilgrims came for the water. Icons of this type, the Life-giving Spring, turn that spring into a picture. The Virgin Mary rises from a marble basin at the centre, holding the Christ child, while the healing water spills from the fountain below her. Painted around 1300, this panel carried the idea far from the capital, into churches where a local spring or a font of holy water could be tied to the same promise. The feast that goes with it still falls on the Friday after Easter, in the brightest week of the Orthodox year.