Agios Christodoulos – Chrysotype with Sandblasting – Mount Athos

Description

Gold printing with Sandblasting with Saint Christodoulos

An amazing gold print with Saint Christodoulos.

Saint Christodoulos was born in a town near Nikaia in Bithynia around 1020 AD. From an early age he decided to leave the world and devote himself to monastic life.  He became a monk in a monastery on Mount Olympus in Bithynia, from where he left to go to the Holy Land.

However, the raids of the Agarens forced him to find refuge on Mount Latros. where he became a monk in the Lavra of Stylos and zealously indulged in prayer and fasting. His spiritual life and ethos resulted in his election as abbot of Lavra, which he ruled for many years.

After raids by the Agarens, Saint Christodoulos settled in Kos and began to build a monastery dedicated to the Virgin Mary in an area near Mount Dikaios. After wandering around the surrounding islands, he arrives in Patmos. Fascinated by the tranquility of the island, he leaves for Constantinople and asks the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos to give him Patmos so that he can build a monastery. The construction of Nea Moni was a difficult and tiring task and so Saint Christodoulos, despite his seventy years, carried stones and lime himself in order to give courage and encourage the rest of the monks.

The Turkish threat forces the Saint to leave Patmos and flee to Evia, where after founding a monastery he measured his living on March 16, 1093 A.D. His relic was brought to Patmos by his disciples secretly from the Euboeans and is kept until today in the small Chapel of Saint Christodoulou, on the Southwest side of the Catholic of the Monastery.

The Church commemorates him on March 16 and the retrieval of his remains on October 21.

Sandblasted Gold Printing: Features

In the icon with the representation of Saint Christodoulos, the hagiographer monk used the technique of gold printing creating a work of unique beauty. Gold-stamping is a kind of hot-stamping technique. Hot-stamping is the method by which very thin metal gold sheet is placed on surfaces such as wood, leather, cardboard, plastic by pressing a heated embossed plate (plate) on our surface. Around the image you also use the technique of sandblasting, it is the technical treatment that achieves the corrosion of part or all of a surface by pouring sand under pressure.

Dimensions: 14,5 x 18 x 0,5 cm.
Origin: Mount Athos