Icon of the New Testament Trinity (c. 1450): Art, History and Details

Icon of the New Testament Trinity (c. 1450) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This icon depicts an important subject in Orthodox Christian art, the three corresponding figures of the single godhead known as the Holy Trinity. The Trinity is represented here in a composition known as the “New Testament Trinity,” which features Christ and God the Father seated on a bench with a dove representing the Holy Spirit between them. The central field is occupied by a large wooden throne with gold highlights on which Christ (left) and the Ancient of the Days (God the Father as Christ in old age) are seated. The Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, hovers within an eight-pointed star that signifies the eighth day, the future eon. On either side of the Trinity are two hymnographers, authors of hymns of praise, both identified by gold letters outlined in red—Saint Kosmas (about 675–752) on the left and Saint Joseph (about 812/818–about 886) on the right. They both suspend scrolls from round-arched windows. The icon likely was part of a church templon, the barrier that separated the nave from the sanctuary in an Orthodox church. It is not signed or dated; however, careful analysis of the painting’s style and technique places it in Constantinople around 1450, just prior to the city’s fall to the Ottomans in 1453. It represents a moment when Byzantine painting reached a brilliant crescendo.

Object facts

• Title: Icon of the New Testament Trinity
• Date: c. 1450
• Culture: Byzantium, Constantinople
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Tempera and gold on wood panel (poplar)
• Dimensions: 35.5 x 62.5 x 2.7 cm (14 x 24 5/8 x 1 1/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Byzantine
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2016.32

A detail from the museum

More than just a breakfast food, eggs are used to make the tempera paint used in this painting.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Bagge, Halvor. Exhibition of the Halvor Bagge Collection of Byzantine Paintings, Carvings, Manuscripts, Embroideries, Etc. New York: [publisher not identified], 1915.
• Fleischer, Jens. "Rundt om en søjlehelgen" Meddelelser fra Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (1993)
• "New in the Galleries.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 56, no. 6 (November/December 2016): Back cover.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.