Agios Ioannis Prodromos – Chrysotype with Sandblasting – Mount Athos

Description

Sandblasting gold printing with St. John the Baptist

Stunning gold print with St. John the Baptist or St. John the Baptist (January 7), who with his teaching prepared the world to welcome the Messiah Jesus, hence the designation “Forerunner”.

According to Luke the Evangelist, John was the son of the priest Zacharias and Elizabeth, who was a relative of the Virgin Mary. About his conception and birth, which occurred 6 months before the birth of Jesus Christ, the Evangelist recounts miraculous events.  Although Elizabeth was considered barren, the archangel Gabriel told Zechariah that his wife would eventually give birth to a boy and give him the name John. At first, Zechariah reportedly did not believe Gabriel’s words and may have suffered a breakdown in which he lost his speech (which was interpreted as punishment) and remained mute until the day the child was named.  Eight days after the birth of the infant, when he was asked to reveal the child’s name, he wrote the name “John” on a sign and immediately his voice returned.

According to a report by Luke the Evangelist, John now appears at the age of 30 “according to divine commandment,” the periphery “in the wilderness of Judea,” preaching: “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and “baptizing those who come unto him.” There Jesus Christ met him and asked him to baptize him. He initially refused, saying that he is not worthy to baptize the Messiah, but the Messiah must baptize him. But Christ persisted, and so St. John the Baptist baptized Him in the waters of the Jordan River.

Both his appearance and the ascetic life of John (he wore a woolen garment “made of camel hair and a belt of leather around his loins”, while his diet was wild honey and locusts), along with his sermons and baptisms of repentance, were bound to arouse a multitude of listeners and admirers, as well as the envy of so many others.

He openly disapproved of the relationship of the then tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas, with Herodias, his brother’s wife. This resulted in imprisonment and then John’s beheading when, at a birthday party, Herod asked his daughter Salome to dance for him and promised under oath to give her whatever she asked. Herodias, her mother, who hated John, then found the opportunity she was looking for where she urged her daughter to ask for the head of the prophet John in a plate.

As a biblical person, he is considered to be at the crossroads between the Old and New Testaments. In the Old he is regarded as the “Prophet” and messenger of God and in the New as the “Forerunner”.

Sandblasted Gold Printing: Features

In the icon with the representation of St. John the Baptist, 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 foil is glued 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