Platytera at Gregoriou Monastery: The Apse Wall Painting of 1779 on Mount Athos

Crowned, enthroned and dressed as a queen, the Virgin who fills the apse conch of the katholikon of Gregoriou Monastery on Mount Athos holds the Christ Child on her knees while two archangels in deacon’s vestments bend towards her from either side. The Platytera at Gregoriou Monastery belongs to the wall paintings completed in 1779 by Gabriel and Gregory, painters from Kastoria, in a katholikon built in 1768 during the rebuilding that followed the fire of 1761. Its position in the sanctuary, its inscriptions and the strict frontality of Mother and Child come from a long tradition. Much else belongs to its own century. The crown is Western in form, the throne breaks into gold-coloured acanthus scrolls, and the robes of the archangels are covered in large, freely drawn flowers.

The name abbreviates Platytera ton Ouranon, “Wider than the Heavens”. The same epithet is attached to the orant Virgin of the Sign. At Gregoriou it is given to a seated and regal figure, with sceptre, globe and crown.

The Platytera in the apse conch of the katholikon of Gregoriou Monastery, Mount Athos, painted in 1779 by Gabriel and Gregory of Kastoria.

Composition of the Platytera at Gregoriou Monastery

The painted field takes the shape of the half-dome. It forms a broad arc, closed along its lower edge by a border of small red and white flowers and divided horizontally into two zones of colour. Above, the background is black and scattered with small golden stars; below, the ground a heavy brick red. The throne straddles the line between the two, so that the Virgin’s head and shoulders rise against the starred dark while her feet rest on the red ground.

The vertical axis belongs entirely to her. Crown, face, Child, knees and footstool lie on a single line through the centre of the conch. Two red medallions with white rims hang on either side of the crown at the level of the halo, inscribed ΜΡ ΘΥ, Mother of God. Along the curving flanks, the archangels’ bodies lean inwards and downwards as the vault narrows towards its edges, and the long diagonals of wings, tapers and sceptre draw the eye back towards the throne from both sides.

The Throne and Its Ornament

Few elements of the composition were painted with such elaboration. The high backrest is crowned with thick gold-coloured acanthus leaves that curl into volutes, each ending in a small knob, and their warm orange-gold stands out sharply against the black field. Two large cushions, white and patterned with flowers, sit at either side of the seat. The supports are tall rectangular blocks edged with rows of white pearl-like dots, marked with small red lozenges and raised on round feet. The sides of the seat are drawn opening outwards, so the structure seems to spread towards the viewer. Beneath the Virgin’s feet lies a pale footstool, and on it her red slippers, worked in gold.

Crown, Sceptre and Globe: The Virgin as Queen

Royal dress, royal insignia. The Virgin wears a blue gown sown with golden flowers, visible across her lap and down to her feet and again on the sleeve of her extended right arm. Over it falls a maphorion rendered wholly in gold. Its folds, drawn in dark red-brown lines, gather into dense bundles over the knees and run in long curves from the shoulders. A bluish head-covering frames her face beneath it. The crown above is a tall gold-coloured structure set with painted red stones, rising in stages to a small finial, and its form is recognisably Western.

Her right hand holds a slender red sceptre that crosses the throne diagonally and ends in a pointed finial beside the golden scroll of the backrest. Against her left knee rests a large globe, supported by her left hand. It is a pale sphere crossed by red bands that meet on its upper surface. The Child’s left hand lies on the same globe. One emblem of sovereignty, touched by two hands: the painters may have intended no more than a practical way of joining the figures, yet the shared object binds Mother and Son more closely than any glance between them could, since neither looks at the other. Both face outwards.

The Archangels in Deacon’s Vestments

Gabriel and Michael attend the throne as deacons and intercessors. Their haloes are gold, their heads shown in three-quarter view with dark hair and inclined towards the centre. Each carries a tall lighted taper and a disc inscribed with an abbreviation of Christ’s name: the archangel on the viewer’s left holds the disc marked ΧC, his companion on the right the one marked IC. Their vestments carry large plant-like motifs in red, green and gold on a pale ground, with broad decorated borders. The same decorative taste appears in the cushions of the throne and in the flowered border of the conch. The wings differ. On the left, pale pinkish-white feathers extend above the figure, with reddish feathers sweeping below. On the right, the wings spread above and below the figure in white shading into dark grey.

Archangels flanking an enthroned Virgin and Child in the central apse have a long history in the painting of the region. In the fifteenth-century decoration of the Pantanassa at Mystras, two youthful archangels hold the same subordinate place beside the Marian image. At Gregoriou the type survives intact, but the bodies have become broader and more animated. Their poses, half bowing and half in flight, fit the curve of the conch with some ingenuity.

Faces of the Virgin and Christ in Close Detail

Detail of the Virgin’s Western-type crown and gold maphorion, with the Christ Child resting his left hand on the globe.

At close range the Virgin’s face is a long oval beneath the crown. The nose is long and straight, the eyes large and wide open under arched brows, with dark shadows beneath them, and the mouth small above a firm chin. The modelling moves from greenish-grey shadows towards light flesh tones on the forehead, the cheeks and the ridge of the nose, with smooth transitions. She looks straight out. Fine surface cracks run across the forehead, beside the nose and down one cheek. Below the crown, the head-covering has a band decorated with dark diagonal lines and small red stones, and a row of red dots marks the collar of the gown at her throat.

The Christ Child and the Globe

Enclosed by a gold cruciform halo outlined in red, Christ sits frontally at the centre of his mother’s body. His body is a child’s, but his face resembles an older boy’s, with short brown hair, large eyes and a small closed mouth. He wears a white chiton scattered with tiny red motifs and a narrow striped clavus over his right shoulder. A red himation is drawn over his left shoulder and wrapped around his waist and legs, and his bare feet appear below its hem. His right hand is raised in blessing, the fingers arranged in a conventional blessing gesture. His left reaches out to the globe. Along the horizontal red band of the sphere runs a sequence of small dark motifs whose individual forms are not distinct.

Gabriel and Gregory of Kastoria and the Katholikon Programme

Gregoriou was founded shortly before the middle of the fourteenth century and dedicated to St Nicholas. Fires in 1497 and 1761 shaped its history. After the second, the monk Joachim the Akarnan, known as Makrygenis, rebuilt the monastery with contributions from officials of the Danubian Principalities. The Ephorate of Antiquities records that the present katholikon was built in 1768 and painted in 1779 by Gabriel and Gregory from Kastoria. The Platytera is therefore one element of a single campaign, which also produced the Christ Pantokrator at the centre of the dome.

Beyond the dome, the walls of the naos are crowded with scenes. There are episodes from the Christological cycle, the Akathist Hymn, and the Lives of the Virgin and of John the Forerunner, together with full-length military saints, hierarchs, martyrs and monks. Arranged in three zones separated by two cornices, these paintings follow the architectural divisions of the church. The cornices correspond to its divisions in section, and the arrangement gives the painting a marked monumentality. In the highest zone stand the great feasts of the year, the Dodekaorton enlarged with scenes of the Passion, together with parables and miracles of Christ. Against this dense narrative sequence, the conch holds a single image without narrative action: a crowned woman, a child and two attendants, their golden garments and ornament set against a field of black and red.