Diptych of the Virgin and Child Enthroned and the Crucifixion

Eastern Mediterranean · c. 1280

Medium

Tempera on panel

Original size

Overall: 37.9 × 59.1 cm (14 15/16 × 23 5/16 in.); Left wing: 38 × 29.5 cm (14 15/16 × 11 5/8 in.); Right wing: 38 × 29.5 cm (14 15/16 × 11 5/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Medieval

This thirteenth-century diptych brings together two of the most sacred images in Byzantine devotion — the enthroned Virgin and Child alongside the Crucifixion — in a format designed for private prayer and intimate contemplation. Created in the Eastern Mediterranean around 1280, it belongs to a tradition of portable devotional panels that spread Byzantine iconographic conventions across the medieval world. The artist worked in tempera on panel, building up layers of egg-based paint over a gessoed ground, using gold-tinged flesh tones and hieratic poses that signal divine presence rather than earthly realism. The figures are rendered with the stylised gravity characteristic of late Byzantine art — elongated, solemn, and rich with symbolic weight. Diptychs of this type were often owned by wealthy laypersons for personal devotion, folding shut to protect the painted surfaces when not in use, which is why so many have survived in remarkable condition. The Art Institute of Chicago's example is considered one of the finest of its kind held in North America. Our hand-painted oil reproduction faithfully recreates the gold-ground luminosity, the deep Byzantine palette, and the precise linear quality of the original — giving you a work that carries the same meditative stillness the panel has held for more than seven centuries.