Saint Basil the Great – Gold Leaf with Sandblasting – Mount Athos

Description

Gold Leaf with Sandblasting featuring Saint Basil the Great

An impressive gold leaf representation of Saint Basil the Great, the father and teacher of the Orthodox Church. He was born in Neocaesarea of Pontus, or according to others, in Caesarea of Cappadocia, and he is celebrated on January 1st.

He had 8 siblings, 3 boys and 5 girls. Of the 4 boys, 3 became bishops (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Peter of Sebaste), and one became a monk (Naucratius). Of his 5 sisters, the first and the eldest child of the family, Macrina, became a nun.

With the Christian upbringing as his foundation, and endowed with gifts of wit and memory, Saint Basil began a remarkable spiritual ascent, mastering nearly all the sciences of his time. Most importantly, he grasped the divine teachings of the Gospel, immediately putting them into practice through his strict ascetic life.

Saint Basil the Great has a rich and significant literary work. In addition to his other writings, he composed the Divine Liturgy, which, after the supremacy of the shorter version by Saint John Chrysostom, is celebrated 10 times a year.

Due to his frail health and strict ascetic life, he left this transient and futile world at the age of fifty, leaving behind a monumental spiritual legacy for humanity.

Gold Leaf with Sandblasting: Characteristics

In the icon depicting Saint Basil, the iconographer monk used the technique of gold leafing, creating a work of unique beauty. Gold leafing is a type of thermographic technique. Thermography is the method in which a very thin gold leaf is applied to surfaces such as wood, leather, cardboard, or plastic by pressing a heated embossed plate (cliché) onto the surface. Around the icon, the technique of sandblasting is also used. Sandblasting is a process that achieves the erosion of part or all of a surface by blasting sand under pressure.

Dimensions: 14.5 x 18 x 0.5 cm
Origin: Mount Athos