Repairing a damaged icon
I painted the icon of the Saints of Africa as a response to the mass murder of Egyptian Coptic Christians in August 2013. The icon started first as a drawing of St. Moses the Black, then I drew St. Mary of Egypt next to him, then St. Anthony the Great next to her, St. Onuphrios next to him and then St. John the Dwarf (a personal favorite saint of mine). Then I decided to move to St. Moses’s left and drew in St. Theodora of Alexandria, St. Sisoes the Great to her left and finally St. Catherine the Great. At this point I realized I had the beginning of an icon. Upon discussion with the priest who Chrismated me an Orthodox Christian in 1999, Fr. Basil Stoyka, he suggested that I call Fr. Moses Berry for guidance upon the now developing icon. Fr. Moses Berry is African-American priest who like me is a convert to Orthodox Christianity and is the director of the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black. I called Fr. Moses and he was delighted to help me plan out this icon. He gave me suggestions of which saints to include, as I simply could not include all of the saints that I wanted to include in the limited space which I would be painting on. He also gave me advice on skin colors for the saints in the icon. I recall him saying to me (paraphrased) “Michael, even if the desert fathers were caucasian, they were in Egypt. After being in the desert for 30 years even if you were caucasian, you would still have a really nice tan. So start with tan as the lightest skin tone on the icon and go from there.” The resulting icon was 50 inches tall x 38 inches wide. Four rows of saints, the full figured saints in the first row were 18 inches tall.
Originally the icon did not have the fifth row of saints, nor did it have the two child saints who are standing below the first row (it had just the Holy Innocents), nor the deisis of the Theotokos (Mary) and St. John the Forerunner venerating Christ in the cloud at the top. Also, it did not include the title “All Saints of Africa”. These additions came when I showed what I thought was the completed icon to my parish priest Fr. George Livanos who made the suggestion that I add the Deisis. Adding the Deisis disrupted the balance of the icon, which necessitated the 5th row of saints. He also commented that other than St. Felicity holding the martyred child of St. Perpetua, there were no children in the icon and asked that I add a child saint. The Holy Innocents figure in the bottom row was not enough, so I added St. Julia of Carthage to the bottom of the icon. Finally he asked that I title the icon “All Saints of Africa.” The inclusion of the top row of saints required me to move the title from where it had been to the indian red border above the icon. Finally, I painted the background a dark blue where it had once been a much lighter blue. There are many more saints who were left off the icon and who I wish I could have included. However, to do that would require the entire wall of a church.
One of the great challenges of creating this icon was to maintain balance among the ranks of the saints. I distinctly recall the first time I painted a complex icon, the icon of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. After I had the line drawing painted on the panel I wanted to start painting and my teacher, Peter, told me to stop. He then explained to me that artistic harmony was as important to the icon as theological harmony and thus I needed to plan the colors of the icon out so that there would not be all blue in one area, all red in another area, etc. With this in mind, I took the same approach to the drawing of this icon. Once I had the list of saints who I would add to the 2nd-4th rows worked out, I had to place them in such a way so they were balanced. Thus the saints are interspersed so that there are not all priests and bishops in one area, holy men and women in another area, and likewise not men in one area and ladies in another area. To further complicate this matter, I had to do this planning taking into account the colors that each saint normally wears and account for this so that not only were the saints evenly spread throughout the icon, but so were the colors. I did not run a time clock while I was painting the icon, however it took me most of the fall of 2013 to paint and I estimate it took me about 200 hours to paint. What made the painting of the icon take even longer was Fr. George asked me to paint each saint separately, instead of painting all of the colors at once. His reasoning behind this was he wanted me to have a relationship with each saint in the icon due to my prayers to each individual saint.
When I first painted the icon, it was suggested to me that I think about donating the icon to either the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black or to FOCUS (Fellowship of Orthodox Christians United to Serve)/St. Moses the Black parish in Pittsburgh. However, at the time I was not quite ready to do that. There was a very long, drawn out struggle between God and I over where this icon should go. Initially I wanted to sell the icon. I priced the icon at a discounted price of $4k, based on 200 hours at $20/hr with the full price of the icon being $20k. Over the years I have sold dozens of mounted prints of this icon in sizes ranging from 9x12 inches to 18x24 inches and yet I never once got a serious offer on the icon, even though countless people loved the icon and bought copies for themselves. . Then came the day last fall when a friend was helping me move things around in my house and he sloppily set the icon in a place where it should not have been. That night, the icon fell. The stretcher bars were broken and the icon was pierced.
I was having cigars this past spring with my good friend Pete Landis and the topic of icons and my inactivity in iconography since early 2016 came up. He asked if I still had this particular icon and when I explained to him what happened to the icon he suggested that it might be time to actually donate the icon to FOCUS/St. Moses the Black Parish. I agreed with him but also noted to him that the icon needed repaired before it could be donated.
At first I thought there was only one puncture in the icon. However, after I removed the icon from the stretcher bars, I quickly noticed there was what I thought were 2 punctures in the icon. The large main puncture, and then the smaller one. I asked a few of my iconographer friends if they had ever had to repair an icon like this before, but none of them had ever had to do this kind of work. I have repaired icons before, but never like this. There was a Theotokos of Tenderness icon which I painted early on where the gold did not lay down properly and so after about about a year of my not being happy with seeing the icon with imperfect gold I used a very sharp chisel to shave off the bad gold. I then sanded the gessoed panel very carefully, applied an ochre layer of paint (which I put under all of my icons) and then re-applied the gold leaf.
There was also the icon of St. John the Dwarf which I did not have to repair, however I had to make a major change to the icon. There are not many icons of St. John the Dwarf in existence and so when I went to paint it I did not have much to base the icon upon other than his writings in the collection of the writings of the Desert Fathers. However, after hearing the story of St. John the Dwarf, a desert father who was told by his superior to plant his walking stick and water it every day, even though the nearest watering hole was about 12 miles away. After 3 years of doing this activity daily his walking stick sprouted shoots and came to life. He then took the fruit from the tree which was once his walking stick to his fellow monks and said “Taste the fruit of obedience. “ When I first painted St. John the Dwarf I painted him with a lighter skin tone. One day my then bishop, Archbishop Melchisedek of Pittsburgh was looking at my work and under his breath His Eminence said to me “Michael, Abba John was a desert father. He was black.” It took me almost a year to get up the nerve to repaint the skin on St. John the Dwarf and give him black skin. Eventually I got over my fears and repainted St. John’s skin black. When His Eminence saw the newly restored icon his response was “Thank you, Michael.”
Neither of these repairs came anywhere close to what was required with the Saints of Africa icon. I asked the owner of a frame shop whose shop I go to on Monday nights for figure drawing how to fix the damage and he gave me a pretty good idea of where to start. He suggested that I use canvas patches under the icon once it was un-stretched, using white glue. He suggested that I put wax paper under the icon on the table it was being repaired on, and then over top of the canvas patch, and then apply heavy pressure to the icon to make sure the patch held. He also suggested the patch be several inches larger than the tear on all sides of the tear. I did just as he said, placing several large heavy books on top of the wax paper. I probably only needed to leave the books there overnight. I wanted to make sure the patch was solidly in place so I left the patch there for 4 days.
Once the patches were in place and solid to my approval, I took the icon to my friend Sarah’s studio so that she could help me re-stretch the icon. Sarah is a very accomplished artist and when I told her what I needed to do to the damaged icon she told me that he had had to do the same thing with damaged paintings before and to bring the icon by her studio for her to help me get the icon back on it’s new stretcher bars. Being 50 inches x 38 inches she agreed that I needed an extra person to help me re-stretch the icon. My one major fear was getting the icon plumb on the stretcher bars so that the name All Saints of Africa was not crooked and the icon was not crooked as well. However, the icon had been on it’s stretcher bars for 6 years and thus the canvas was nicely creased on the edges, and thus this was not an issue with re-stretching the icon.
While re-stretching the icon at Sarah’s studio, I discovered another tear in the icon. Tear #3. Tear #3 was a small tear, and probably only noticeable by my own eye, but it was clearly there and it needed repaired. I am a very spiritual person and I see significance in all things. Thus the fact that the icon was torn 3x immediately caught my attention. Three being the number of the Holy Trinity. Do you THINK that God was trying to get my attention? Yeah, I do too. We were able to get the icon pretty tight on the stretcher bars, but not perfectly tight, so when I took it home I laid it face down on my work table and spritzed the back of the canvas with water. After the water was dry, the canvas had tightened up a bit, but not enough. So I spritzed more water on the back of the icon and that did a nearly perfect job tightening the icon up on it’s stretcher bars.
Once the icon was good and tight, it was time to fix the tear from the painted side. Originally I debated filling the puncture wound with gesso, however upon discussing this with my good friend Michael K, himself a very accomplished iconographer, it was decided this was not a good idea. I remembered what Peter once said to me during class “Michael, the only person who I know who looks at icons from 6 inches away is YOU.” I trusted Peter was right and decided to simply paint in the colors over the tear. In the end, it turned out that Michael was right and the painting over the tears did a wonderful job of hiding the three wounds which the icon had.
Michael K was right, and now the icon is ready to go to it’s new home, FOCUS/St. Moses the Black parish in the Hill District of Pittsburgh. The wound in the icon that was once so noticeable is now barely even evident. The parish priest Fr. Paul asked that I keep the icon in my possession until FOCUS get’s its new space at the end of the summer and then I can bring the icon so that it will be part of their blessing of their new building. Fr. Paul was amazed at the timing of my donation to the parish, but I have to give God credit for that. I am only happy that I finally listened to and obeyed the still small voice of my creator. Glory to God in the highest!
