Thirteenth Century Crusader Icons on Mount Sinai

Abstract

Owing to an uninterrupted history from its foundation by the Emperor Justinian until the present day, St. Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai harbors within its walls the most outstanding collection of icons known today, not only in terms of numbers (there are more than two thousand), but also of age (the earliest date from the sixth century) and quality. Yet this collection is not a cross-section of Greek icon painting in which one might expect all aspects to be equally well represented. The collection intimately reflects the vicissitudes of this holy site which belonged to all Christendom and therefore comprises gifts of icons of many styles from many lands in often uneven proportions. There are certain gaps, e.g. within the Constantinopolitan icons from times when connections with the capital of the Byzantine empire were disrupted, while at the same time a new orientation led to a rapprochement with the Latin West during the period of the Crusader kingdom. A close cultural and artistic interrelationship between the East and the West resulted, which also affected icon painting, as I shall try to demonstrate in this preliminary study.

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