Saint Luke the Physician – Handmade Pyrography

Description

Handmade Pyrography Depicting Saint Luke the Physician

An exceptional image created using the technique of pyrography, depicting Saint Luke the Physician. This image has been entirely handmade.

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

Archbishop Luke was born on April 27, 1877, in Kerch, in the far eastern part of Crimea. From a young age, he showed concern for the suffering of his fellow humans, which led him to choose medicine as his field of study, seeing it as an area of social contribution. He married 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 frequently visited her grave.

He worked tirelessly, deeply focused on his dream: to save as many lives as possible, alleviating human suffering and pain. In his efforts, he often reached the point of exhaustion, but he never gave up, drawing strength from long hours of prayer and his love for Christ.

As a doctor, 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 foundation for an entire medical specialty, and his work continues to be used in medicine today. In 1946, he was awarded the Stalin Prize, the highest distinction of pre-war Russia for all his scientific publications. He refused to accept the award (an unimaginable reaction at that time) and donated the monetary sum to the poor.

Saint Luke was a devout Christian. He never missed a 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 ball soaked in iodine, he would make the sign of the cross on the patient’s body where the incision was to be made. Only after this would he formally say “the scalpel.”

He endured tremendous sufferings, imprisonments, exiles, and persecutions due to his deep faith and unwavering confession of the Orthodox faith in front of courts and state officials. He fell asleep in the Lord on June 11, 1961. His body was placed for public veneration.

Pyrography: Characteristics

Pyrography is an art form that attracts many creators due to the impressive results that can be achieved. It is a painting technique that uses the two primal elements of nature, wood and fire. With patience and attention to detail, the monks create pyrographic images, paying great attention to avoiding mistakes, as they cannot be corrected as with pencil drawings.

This image combines the art of engraving with pyrography, resulting in an exceptional relief effect.

The image is available upon request.