Portraits of Divinity: About “On the Slopes of Helicon”
Portraits of Divinity:
A “study/ in the faces of men and angels”.
Mt. Helicon: “In Greek mythology, two springs sacred to the Muses were located here: the Aganippe and the Hippocrene, both of which bear “horse” …in their names. In a related myth, the Hippocrene spring was created when the winged horse Pegasus aimed his hoof at a rock, striking it with such force that the spring burst from the spot…
“In his Aitia, Callimachus recounts his dream in which he was young once more and conversed with the Muses on Helicon. There had been a temple built on Helicon in their honor which contained statues of these Muses, and in his Metamorphoses the Roman poet Ovid writes of Minerva [Athena] visiting the muses on Mount Helicon.
“The Hippocrene spring was considered to be a source of poetic inspiration. In the late seventh century BCE, the poet Hesiod sang how in his youth he had pastured his sheep on the slopes of Helicon where Eros and the Muses already had sanctuaries and a dancing-ground near the summit, where “their pounding feet awaken desire”. There the Muses inspired him and he began to sing of the origins of the gods. Thus Helicon became an emblem of poetical inspiration. Callimachus explicitly follows in the footsteps of Hesiod and he placed on Helicon the episode in which Tiresias stumbles upon Athena bathing and is blinded but given the art of prophecy.
“In Hesiod’s Theogony Helicon was mentioned:
‘From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing,
Who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon,
And dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring
And the altar of the almighty son of Cronos, and,
When they have washed their tender bodies in Permessus
Or in the Horse’s Spring or Olmeius,
Make their fair, lovely dances upon highest Helicon
And move with vigorous feet…’ [Wikipedia]
“A dark temple in Karyes, Mount Athos”:
Before founding the Great Lavra, the oldest of the large monasteries on Mt. Athos, Greece, St. Athanasius built the church of the Protaton in the monastic village of Karyes. This village and its church, dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God, serves the elected monastic government of the Mt. Athos peninsula.
The Protaton, built in the 10th century, is among the oldest buildings still standing on Mt. Athos. The present frescoes were painted at the end of the 13th century when the church was repaired. Panselinos was one of the greatest masters of Byzantine iconography. With his school of students, he produced a style of realistic modeling but with a use of unusual greens and reds for light and shadow in flesh-tones. His school is also marked by unique strong facial expressions displaying divine experience. Only the oldest monasteries are painted by Panselinos and his school. His style was replaced by that of Theophan the Cretan, another master whose style is less sensual but stronger in the facial expression of inward experience.
When I saw the Church of the Protaton in 2007, its stonework was being reinforced. It was completely surrounded, inside and out, even to the roof, by a shell of scaffolds.
Orthodox Illumination 