Portable Triptych Icon (1600s): Art, History and Details

Portable Triptych Icon (1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This triptych icon was probably commissioned by a lay person for private prayer and meditation. It could be folded and shut when not in use. The scenes represented from left to right are: The Crucifixion (left); The Resurrection and Anastasis (center); and Adoration of the Miracle-Working Icon of the Vladimir Mother of God (right). Small portable icons such as this were common to later Russian religious practice.

Object facts

• Title: Portable Triptych Icon
• Date: 1600s
• Culture: Byzantium, Russia, Moscow?, Byzantine period, 17th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: painted wood panel within enameled brass frame
• Dimensions: Unframed: 6.5 x 6 x 0.2 cm (2 9/16 x 2 3/8 x 1/16 in.); Closed: 7.3 x 6.9 x 3.4 cm (2 7/8 x 2 11/16 x 1 5/16 in.); Open and extended: 7 x 19.1 cm (2 3/4 x 7 1/2 in.)
• Collection: MED - Byzantine
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1961.35

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Harry F. Stratton

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.

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.