Icon Not Made by Hand
In the Western Tradition, this image is called Veronica’s veil. When Christ was carrying the Cross to Golgotha, a woman named Veronica (whose name means “true image”) handed the sweating Christ a cloth with which to dry his face. When he handed it back to her, his image was imprinted on the fabric.
The story in the Eastern Tradition is different: it is said that King Abgar of Edessa, who was sick with leprosy, sent his servant to bring Jesus to heal him. If Jesus refused, his servant was supposed to paint a portrait of Christ. Unable in that moment to go with the servant and knowing that the servant would be unable to paint a portrait because of the transcendent nature of his visage, Christ asked for a cloth to wipe his face. In so doing, the first image of Christ, not made by hands, was imprinted on the cloth.
This icon is painted on a square board, after the early tenth-century Novgorodian example housed at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. The combination of the shape of the square board, traditionally representative of the created world, and the circle of the halo, traditionally representative of the Divine, symbolizes the mystical union of the material and the Divine worlds, reminding the viewer that Christ was both fully God and fully man.
Iconographically, this icon is unusual in that there is no square “napkin” behind the face. Instead, triangular rays extend to the four corners of the board, reminiscent of the Christ Enthroned icon in which four rays extend outward from a seated royal Christ. These rays represent the idea that God’s glory goes out into all the creation, both visible and invisible, permeating all of reality. Within the rays of this icon are the letters NI KA, which is the Greek word for “victor,” and the letters IC XC, which are the Greek abbreviations for the name “Jesus Christ.” Both letter sets are more commonly seen on the festal icon of the Crucifixion, reminding the viewer of Christ’s physical victory over death through the Resurrection. By nestling the phrases within the outward extending rays of Divinity, the iconographer yet again references the two natures of Christ, and declares that the impact of Christ’s incarnation extends in time and space, in physical and mystical reality.
In this age, it is the Church that expresses the ever-extending rays of Christ’s Divinity, the truth that pierces all reality. “He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent” (Colossians 1:13 ESV).