Man of Sorrows (Tzafouris)

Nikolaos Tzafouris's Man of Sorrows, painted around 1500 and now in the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens, represents the Imago Pietatis — the image of the suffering Christ rising from the tomb, displaying his wounds — in the hybrid Byzantine-Western style that was Tzafouris's specialty. The Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens provides an ideal institutional context for this work, which bridges the Greek Orthodox icon tradition and Western devotional image culture. This type of image originated in Rome but was quickly adopted throughout Europe and the Byzantine world, becoming one of the most universally reproduced devotional subjects of the late medieval period. Tzafouris produced numerous versions of the Man of Sorrows that circulated as portable devotional objects.

The frontal Christ figure rises from the tomb, displaying the wounds of the Passion. Byzantine elongation and gold ground are combined with Western descriptive naturalism in the wounds and the sorrowful facial expression. The paint surface is meticulous and dense in the icon tradition.