Lot Essay
Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were sons of Judah. They were given the Babylonian names Meshack, Shadrach and Abednego by Nebuchadnessars chief eunuch. When they refused to bow down to the golden image Nebuchadnezzar had made, they were thrown into a fiery furnace. They walked from it unscathed but the furnace was so hot that the men who threw them in perished. (Daniel 1:7, 2:49, 3:1-30).
The iconography and inspiration for this tabletka would appear to have been derived from models based on the famous, late 15th/early 16th tabletki from the St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod. The dimensions of the offered tabletka also correspond with these earlier models. However, in the St. Sophia tabletki, the present subjects do not appear together; the Three Boys in the Fiery Furnace is combined with the Assembly of Archangels, and the Holy Trinity with the Hodigitria. (See V.N. Lazarev, The Double-Faced Tablets from the St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod: Pages from the History of Novgorodian Painting, Moscow, 1977, Nos.V and XIX.
Lazarev also discusses four tabletki from the Zeiner-Henriksen collection. (Op cit. p.47).
The offered icon is closest to a tabletka in the Timken Art Gallery, San Diego, one side of which has the Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace the other the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. See Byzantine Greek and Russian Icons, Exhibition catalogue, London (Temple Gallery), 1979, pp.32-36.
The iconography and inspiration for this tabletka would appear to have been derived from models based on the famous, late 15th/early 16th tabletki from the St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod. The dimensions of the offered tabletka also correspond with these earlier models. However, in the St. Sophia tabletki, the present subjects do not appear together; the Three Boys in the Fiery Furnace is combined with the Assembly of Archangels, and the Holy Trinity with the Hodigitria. (See V.N. Lazarev, The Double-Faced Tablets from the St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod: Pages from the History of Novgorodian Painting, Moscow, 1977, Nos.V and XIX.
Lazarev also discusses four tabletki from the Zeiner-Henriksen collection. (Op cit. p.47).
The offered icon is closest to a tabletka in the Timken Art Gallery, San Diego, one side of which has the Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace the other the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. See Byzantine Greek and Russian Icons, Exhibition catalogue, London (Temple Gallery), 1979, pp.32-36.