Christ Pantocrator

Iconography

The icon of Christ Pantokrator is one of the most common religious images of Orthodox Christianity. Generally speaking, in Byzantine art church art and architecture, an iconic mosaic or fresco of Christ Pantokrator occupies the space in the central dome of the church, in the half-dome of the apse, or on the nave vault. Some scholars (Latourette 1975: 572) consider the Pantocrator a Christian adaptation of images of Zeus, such as the great statue of Zeus enthroned at Olympia. The development of the earliest stages of the icon from Roman Imperial imagery is easier to trace.

The deesis group on an iconostasis lower down in the church also centres on a Pantocrator, flanked by the Theotokos (Mary) and John the Baptist with other saints, interceding with Christ as he sits in judgement.

The image of Christ Pantocrator was one of the first images of Christ developed in the Early Christian Church and remains a central icon of the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the half-length image, Christ holds the New Testament in his left hand and makes the gesture of teaching or of blessing with his right. The typical Western Christ in Majesty is a full-length icon, with Christ typically seated on a throne. In the early Middle Ages, it usually presented Christ in a mandorla or other geometric frame, surrounded by the Four Evangelists or their symbols.

The oldest known surviving example of the icon of Christ Pantocrator was painted in encaustic on panel in the sixth or seventh century, and survived the period of destruction of images during the Iconoclastic disputes that twice racked the Eastern church, 726 to 787 and 814 to 842. It was preserved in Saint Catherine's Monastery, in the remote desert of the Sinai. The gessoed panel, finely painted using a wax medium on a wooden panel, had been coarsely overpainted around the face and hands at some time around the thirteenth century. When the overpainting was cleaned in 1962, the ancient image was revealed to be a very high-quality icon, probably produced in Constantinople.

Although it has been argued that the two different facial expressions on either side of Christ's face, unusually pronounced in the Sinai icon, depict a symbolic duality, with Christ as the bearer of mercy and grace (left half) and as the judge of unrepentant sinners (right side), technical analysis by Manolis Chatzidakis asserts that this asymmetry does not stem from a symbolic intention, but rather from pictorial techniques inherited from ancient portraiture: “The two great eyes are not completely identical either in dimension or in shape… This realistic image… is often produced by procedures which can be considered as ‘clichés d'atelier’.” Furthermore, from the perspective of art criticism, Kurt Weitzmann argues that the differing facial features on either side emphasize Jesus' human nature..

The icon, traditionally half-length when in a semi-dome, which became adopted for panel icons also, depicts Christ fully frontal with a somewhat melancholy and stern aspect, with the right hand raised in blessing or, in the early encaustic panel at Saint Catherine's Monastery, the conventional rhetorical gesture that represents teaching. The left hand holds a closed book with a richly decorated cover featuring the Cross, representing the Gospels. An icon where Christ has an open book is called "Christ the Teacher", a variant of the Pantocrator. Christ is bearded, his brown hair centrally parted, and his head is surrounded by a halo. The icon usually has a gold ground comparable to the gilded grounds of Byzantine mosaics.

Often, the name of Christ is written on each side of the halo, as IC and XC. Christ's fingers are depicted in a pose that represents the letters IC, X and C, thereby making the Christogram ICXC (for "Jesus Christ"). The IC is composed of the Greek characters iota (Ι) and lunate sigma (C; instead of Σ, ς)—the first and last letters of 'Jesus' in Greek (Ἰησοῦς); in XC the letters are chi (Χ) and again the lunate sigma—the first and last letters of 'Christ' in Greek (Χριστός).

In many cases, Christ has a cruciform halo inscribed with the letters Ο Ω Ν, i.e. ὁ ὤν "The Existing One".

Russian types

The Spas Smolensky (Smolensk Saviour) is one Russian type, with a full-length standing Christ. A large version is over one of the gateways into the Moscow Kremlin, beneath the Spasskaya Tower (or "Saviour Tower").

The Spas v silach is a seated full length type.

Statuary

In certain churches of Western Christianity, Christ Pantocrator has been depicted. A prominent example is the topmost statue in the ornate altarpiece of Saint Martin's Lutheran Church in Næstved.