AN ICON FOR AUGUST

JOHN COLEMAN, a keen watercolour painter, first started his journey into iconography while residing at Hilfield Friary in Dorset. An icon is a religious painting popular in the Orthodox Churches of Greece and Russia. They inspire prayer which may be a channel of divine grace and sanctification.

After researching icon-writing using egg tempera and the pigments that would have been used at the time, he created the first of many carefully researched icons. His research took him on both visits and stays with Coptic monks in Egypt, and on many other travels, during which he studied pigments, techniques, and traditional writings. He became renowned as one of the finest icon-writers, certainly in the UK, if not internationally.

Many of the great and ‘ordinary’ visited his simple small flat and studio in Dorset. They were always welcomed to talk about John’s great passions of icons, steam trains, railways, and bell-ringing; or he would teach others how to write icons. He died in August 2021.

You may find his ‘Icon of the Virgin of Tenderness of Vladimir’ in Truro Cathedral, commissioned in 2010.

I invite you to participate. One way of using the icon is to sit still, and let the call of Mary’s eyes draw you into the closeness there is between a child and its mother. As you remember what is before her and the sadness, perhaps you could remember a sadness of your own or another. Now look at how Christ comforts Mary, and as you look, imagine him comforting you or the people you are remembering. Pray to Christ and his mother as you look.

The origin of this icon was in 1125 AD where an unknown iconographer in Constantinople wrote (painted) it for the Cathedral of Vladimir. It can now be found today in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Seen in other icons depicting the infant Christ, it became a tradition to show spiritual maturity in Christ.

Mary’s left hand is seen gesturing towards Christ to indicate ‘He is the one’.

It is easy to think that such ‘Tenderness Icons’ depict the natural tenderness of a mother towards her baby, but they have a deeper meaning. Mary is seen moments after the Presentation in the Temple when Simeon had said to her “a sword shall pierce your own soul also” (Luke 2:35). Pondering what Simeon meant after a future event, Mary cradles Christ in her arms and partly enfolds him protectively in her mantle, her soft gaze directed straight at us as if to personally engage us.

Christ offers his mother His tender love and compassion. We are imperceptibly drawn in to sharing a mystical moment when the love of God in Christ embraces a human being. We might pray for the manifest love of a 21st century Russian Vladimir to show tenderness and peace to the people of Ukraine.

Peter Sellars