The Nativity of Studenica


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The Nativity of Studenica

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Commander

Icon nb 26

Size : 25 x 33 cm.

Linden board

Gilded haloes. Egg tempera.


Icon adapted from the fresco of the Nativity or Jesus (Convent of Studenica, Serbia, XIVth Century).

The center of the icon is the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in the manger, with the dark cave where he was born as background.
The black cave symbolizes the world stricken with sin through man's fault, in which the Sun of truth shone forth. The swaddling clothes and the sepulcher foreshadow His death and burial.
The presence of the ox and the ass reminds us of Isaiah's prophecy 1,3: "the ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel does not know Me, and the people has not regarded Me".
The central position and size of the Mother of God symbolizes the renewal of all born on earth, the new Eve. She is half sitting, which points to the absence in Her case of the usual sufferings and therefore to the virgin nature of the Nativity and the Divine origin of the Babe.

 

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