Saint Luke the Physician – Antiqued Lithograph with Gold Leaf – Mount Athos

Description

Antiqued Lithograph of Saint Luke the Physician

Saint Luke, canonized in May 1996 by the Russian Orthodox Church, was a Russian archbishop and surgeon-professor.

Archbishop Luke was born on April 27, 1877, in Kerch, in the easternmost part of Crimea. From a young age, he showed great concern for the suffering of his fellow human beings. For this reason, he chose to study medicine, seeing it as a field of social service. He married the nurse Anna Vasilyevna, with whom he had four children, but at the age of 38, he lost his wife to tuberculosis. He never remarried and often visited her grave.

He worked tirelessly, deeply focused on his dream: to save ever more lives, relieving people from pain and suffering. In his efforts, he often reached the point of exhaustion but never gave up, drawing strength from long hours of prayer and his devotion to Christ.

As a physician, Saint Luke published forty scientific works. One of his classic works, published in 1934, is the book “Essays on the Surgery of Pyogenic Infections,” which laid the foundations for an entire medical specialty, and his work continues to be used in medicine to this day. In 1946, he was awarded the Stalin Prize, the highest distinction in pre-war Russia for scientific publications. However, he declined the award (an unimaginable reaction at the time) and donated the prize money to the poor.

Saint Luke was a devout Christian. He never missed a Divine Liturgy and attended all-night vigils and matins on Saturdays, Sundays, and Orthodox feast days. In the operating room, he always had an icon of the Virgin Mary, before which he would pray for a few minutes before each operation. Then, using a cotton swab soaked in iodine, he would make the sign of the cross on the patient’s body at the place where the incision would be made. Only after this would he solemnly say, “the scalpel.”

Antiqued Lithograph: Characteristics

In this particular image, the monk iconographer used the technique of lithography to create a work of unique beauty, framed with gold leaf. Specifically, using a lithographed copy of Byzantine art, the monk crafted this piece following the traditional method of artificial aging, as taught in the iconography workshops of Mount Athos. In fact, the artificial aging of the icon is handcrafted, a process to which the monks of Mount Athos give great importance.

Origin: Mount Athos