Eudocia, or more properly Aelia Eudocia Augusta, was the Eastern Roman Empress and wife of Theodosius II, living between the years A.D. 400-460. Within the Byzantine East she is considered a saint and her feast is observed on August 13th. Our concern here today, however, is less with the 'who' and more with the 'how' of this particular iconographic depiction given that it is something rather rare.
What we are looking at here is a rather distinctive form of iconographic depiction, an icon of Eudocia made from marble using a technique called pietra dura; this is a technique involving the use of highly polished, coloured stones that have been cut into specific, tailored forms (for example, cutting out the shape of a face or a hand) that are then fit together like pieces of a puzzle in order to create the final image. In that regard it is different from the far more familiar mosaic work, a method which involves the use of uniform, cube-shaped stone and glass pieces, called tesserae, that are all effectively the same in shape but fit together in such a way so as to make up specific forms and ultimately the whole.
This particular image is thought to have been a part of the decorative program of the Lips monastery (now the Fenari Isa Mosque) located within Constantinople, and it is dated to the early tenth century. In that regard, it shows us an example of early post-iconoclastic era Byzantine art in a form that was still heavily rooted within the tradition of the Roman Empire with its particular love for polychrome stonework.
To produce this type of icon, a base marble slab would have had recessed spaces carved out and then the corresponding cut and polished coloured stones (the aforementioned "puzzle pieces") would have then slotted into those spaces in order to create the coloured image -- an image that, in this case, depicts the saintly figure of the Empress Eudocia, seen standing in ancient orans posture (a posture that is found in many examples of paleochristian art), featuring the Empress in beautiful, imperial Byzantine dress. The Greek inscription, "HAGIA EUDOKHA" (St. Eudocia) has also been carved into the panel in typical Byzantine iconographic form.
The particularly high quality of this piece, along with the incredible state of its preservation, make it a particularly important piece of extant Byzantine art. Add to this that very little of this type of iconographic depiction has come down to us and this really is an example worthy of your attention.
Here is a closer look at some of the details:
One cannot help but wonder if this sort of work was a mere outlier, or was this particular monastery filled with other such examples of pietra dura iconography. If it was, it must have been truly spectacular to behold and perhaps our closest comparator of what it might have looked and felt like would be the the pietra dura rich, Renaissance era Cappella dei Principi in Florence.
One cannot help but wonder if this sort of work was a mere outlier, or was this particular monastery filled with other such examples of pietra dura iconography. If it was, it must have been truly spectacular to behold and perhaps our closest comparator of what it might have looked and felt like would be the the pietra dura rich, Renaissance era Cappella dei Principi in Florence.
This particular icon was rediscovered in the seventeenth century during reconstruction efforts. Today it is housed in Istanbul's Archeological Museum.
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