The Virgin Cataphyge (Refuge) and St. John the Evangelist

In the spring of 1395 a Byzantine empress named Helena lost her father, Konstantin Dragas, a Balkan lord killed fighting at the Battle of Rovine. This panel was her memorial to him. It shows the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Theologian standing together, and beside the Virgin runs an inscription in red giving her a rare title, Kataphyge, Greek for refuge. That word almost never appears in Byzantine art. Scholars know it in only three places across the whole tradition, and this icon is the last of them. Along the bottom a votive line names the giver, the faithful basilissa Helena, standing in for the portrait of herself she chose not to include. The panel is painted on both sides, with a vision of Christ on the reverse. It was made for the monastery of Saint John the Theologian at Poganovo and later came to Sofia. Helena commissioned it the same year her father died, two years after the Ottomans had taken Tarnovo, the old capital of the Bulgarian tsars.