The Abbey offers for sale the work of its iconographers. Buying an icon is not a commonplace gesture. One must first discover the image that leads us to prayer and draws us towards the invisible. One must have met this image in its reality, seen its colours singing, appreciated the whole of it as well as its details. That is why this site does not allow you to buy icons online as you could buy any other item. If one of the icons featured here appeals to you, we invite you to come and see it, so that you can make an informed purchase.
A true icon is not an inexpensive object. It has required many hours of patient and very meticulous work. Its price varies according to the size of the icon, the number of its characters, the amount of gold that has been used. It is stated at the abbey.
25 x 30 cm, on view at Fontgombault Abbey.
This icon on a golden background carries us into the divine world, that of eternity, where the very gentle, deep and merciful eyes of the incarnate Son of God are awaiting us.
Christ is wearing here a purple tunic, a royal symbol of his divinity, and a blue-green mantle. This colour, which is that of the terrestrial globe and the material creation, in iconography traditionally signifies his humanity.
On each side of the head are the first and last letters of the name "Jesus Christ", and in the cross of the nimbus, the Greek letters of the divine Name revealed in the Old Testament : ὁ ὤν, ho ôn, "He who is" (Ex 3:14). The bottom inscription is the Slavonic words Господь Вседержитель, meaning Pantocrator, "the Almighty Lord".
37 x 25 cm, on view at Fontgombault Abbey.
Benedict and Scholastica were twins; their birth was full of tears, because it cost the life of their mother Abundantia. The two children loved each other tenderly, but both loved God above everything else. From an early age, Scholastica was consecrated to God, while she kept living with her father Euproprius. Benedict first led an eremitic life in a cave at Subiaco. Historians remain silent about what happened to Scholastica until her brother Benedict, who had become the father of a monastic community, settled on Mount Cassino. We may suppose with Mabillon that after the death of her father she lived in a community of nuns, and settled in a monastery close to that of her brother, the monastery of Palumbariola, "a small house for the doves", so that she could go and visit him once a year.
It was during one of these visits that the episode recounted by St. Gregory the Great took place, in which Scholastica obtained that a clear summer sky should turn into a raging storm, which prevented her brother from returning to his monastery, and forced him to stay all night long, to talk with his sister of the joys of spiritual life. Three days later, St. Benedict saw Scholastica's soul flying into heaven under the form of a dove. He ordered her to be buried in the tomb he had prepared for himself.
29 x 50 cm, on view at Fontgombault Abbey.
Francis was born in Assisi, Umbria, in 1182. His father was a rich cloth merchant, and his mother, who belonged to a noble Provence family, taught him from his early childhood "the sweet language of France". Tradition has it that this is the reason why his father, who had baptized him John, decided to call him Francesco, "the Frenchman".
After a carefree youth, he converted and decided to renounce worldly riches, thus embracing "Lady Poverty". He soon had followers and founded the order of Friars Minor, the "Fraticelli". Francis tirelessly preached the love of God: "Love is not loved", he would cry as he walked through the streets of Assisi, his eyes burning with tears. He also preached detachment from perishable goods, love for all men, forgiveness of offences, mercy, peace, concord, love for creatures. His missionary zeal took him to the Holy Land and Egypt. Two years before his death, on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Christ gave him the stigmata of his Passion, in his hands, feet and side. The Poverello was canonized by Pope Gregory X, barely two years after his death, in 1228.
On this icon, St. Francis is depicted wearing the Franciscan habit, barefoot, blessing with his right hand, and holding in his left hand a phylactery with the first line of his famous "Canticle of the Sun and the Creatures" in old Italian: " Laudato si mi Signore, cum tucte le tue creature. . . ".
35 x 45 cm, on view at Fontgombault Abbey.
This lyrical icon of the Mother of God and Child is inspired by the ancient Lyubiatovo icon in Pskov, which dates back to the first half of the 15th century. It belongs to the iconographic type known as "of Tenderness" or Eleousa, i. e. , "merciful". This type developed in Byzantium before the 12th century, on the basis of that of the Hodigitria or "Conductress". Mary is depicted with the Child pressing his cheek against her face, cuddling up to her in a touching gesture full of life. The Virgin is represented either standing or seated on a throne, or in bust form. It is this last variant which has known the widest diffusion in the Russian iconography, the icons taking the name of the place of their creation or of the accounts reporting their miraculous appearance: the Vladimir icon, the most famous of all, the icon of Feodorov, of the Don, of Tolg, etc.
The icon of Lyubiatovo presents a characteristic detail : the gesture of the Child who puts his hand on the chin of his Mother, belonging to the type "Enjoué" (Virgin and Child playing, frolicking), which appeared in the Christian East in the 13th-14th centuries. Another peculiarity is the phylactery in Christ's left hand, a detail peculiar to the Hodigitria type. Thus this icon presents the original combination of three different types of Marian iconography.
The contrast of colours from which are absent bright spots of white, except for the light features of the faces and the phylactery, the particular softness of the range of intense and warm tones : yellow, red, orange, dark red and greenish blue, typical of Pskov, are in perfect harmony with the emotional state of the pensive and collected effigies.
40 x 51 cm, on view at Fontgombault Abbey.
Clement was the third successor of St. Peter on the Chair of Rome, after the lower-profile pontificates of Linus and Cletus, both of whom died martyrs. St. Irenaeus of Lyons said of him that he had "seen the Apostles": "their preaching resounded in his ears, their tradition was still before his eyes." St. Clement is best known for his Letter to the Corinthians, written around 95, a gentle and firm exhortation to unity and charity which was read in the Christian assemblies of the first centuries on a par with St. Paul's letters. This letter ends with the famous "Great Prayer", one of the major documents on the liturgy of antiquity. The name of St. Clement is mentioned in the Roman Canon of the Mass.
On this icon, the holy martyred pope is clothed in the episcopal habit, a white chasuble strewn with blue crosses, and the omophorion, a kind of long woollen scarf adorned with crosses, the distinctive sign of bishops. He has a grey beard and a clerical tonsure. He holds the book of the Gospels in his left hand, and blesses with his right hand.
24 x 29 cm, on view at Fontgombault Abbey.
Thomas was born around 1225 near Aquinas, not far from Naples, and died in the Cistercian monastery of Fossa Nova on March 7, 1274, at the age of 49, while on his way to the Council of Lyon. After having been an oblate from the age of 5 at the Benedictine abbey of Mount Cassino, he entered the newly founded Order of Friars Preachers at the age of 19. He was sent to continue his studies in Paris, where he was taught by St. Albert the Great, whom he then followed to Cologne. Very quickly, Brother Thomas proved to be a powerful genius in philosophy and theology, magnificently realizing the ideal of the Order of Friars Preachers : contemplata aliis tradere, "to transmit to others what one has contemplated." He taught tirelessly until the end of his life, leaving a monumental work that made manifest all the mysteries of the faith in their coherence, on the basis of a few simple and luminous principles, a work similar to a spiritual cathedral. The holiness of Brother Thomas was solemnly proclaimed by Pope John XXII in 1323. St. Pius V proclaimed him Doctor of the Church in 1567.
This icon represents St. Thomas in his Dominican habit. His eyes seems to stare at the invisible. On his chest shines what became his iconographic emblem as soon as the 14th century, the golden sun of Wisdom. In its centre, in a circle, can be seen the face of Christ. In his right hand Thomas holds the quill of the theologian, and in his left hand an open book in which are inscribed these lines from the hymn Pange lingua ("Sing, O my tongue") that he composed in honour of the Blessed Sacrament : Verbum caro panem verum Verbo carnem efficit ("the Word made flesh, by his word, changes true bread into his flesh"). Pope Urban IV had indeed asked him in 1264 to compose the texts of the Office and Mass of the Blessed Sacrament.
35 x 45 cm, on view at Fontgombault Abbey.
This icon is inspired by a fresco of Master Denys dating from the early years of the 16th century, in the monastery of Feraponte, in the Vologda region. This type of representation is ancient: the oldest known example dates from around 527 and is found in the catacomb of Comodilla in Rome. The Mother of God sits on a throne, as an empress. She is clothed in a blue tunic and the dark red maphorion where three golden stars shine, symbolizing her perpetual virginity, before, during and after childbirth. She wears the traditional red slippers. The Child sits on her lap as on a throne. His face is grave and thoughtful, for he is the eternal Wisdom made flesh. He is dressed as an adult, with the yellow ochre imperial tunic, enhanced with gold, a symbol of his divinity. He blesses with his right hand and clasps the scroll of the Gospels in the other one. This Virgin in majesty, "throne of Wisdom", shares with the sculptures of ancient paganism her hieratic attitude, her gestures and features. But what is expressed here is the dogma of the Divine Maternity, proclaimed at the Council of Ephesus (431): since that time, she has sit as a sovereign in the apses of churches, with all the honours of a Byzantine empress. St. John Damascene seems to have this image before his eyes when he writes: "Her hands carry the Lord, and her knees are a throne more sublime than the Cherubim; she is the royal throne on which the Angels contemplate, seated, their Master and their Creator".
24 x 29 cm, on view at Fontgombault Abbey.
St. John the Baptist is the greatest of the prophets, as Christ himself attests (Mt 11:9-11), for he alone was able to point to the Messiah of whom the others only had a glimpse from afar. This depiction of St. John the Baptist is modelled after a 16thcentury Pskov icon. The monumental figure of the last Prophet stands out clearly against the golden background. Everything about him is imbued with gravity: the gesture of his right hand, characteristic of the preacher, the scepter and phylactery solemnly raised, the heavy folds of his himalion, the cloak thrown over his tunic of camel hair.
The face of the Precursor is surprisingly austere: it seems to reflect the essence of the message that he had to transmit to the people of his time on behalf of God, with all its weight of absoluteness: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mt 3:2). "Produce worthy fruits of repentance" (Mt 3:8).
on view at Fontgombault Abbey.
The Holy Face of Christ takes its origins from several traditions: that of the veil of St. Veronica, that of the veil of King Abgar, that of the Holy Shroud. The second tradition was of a paramount importance in promoting this type of icon. The historian Eusebius of Caesarea, in the 4th century, reports that the king of Edessa, Abgar V, a contemporary of Jesus, and afflicted with leprosy, sent a messenger to Christ asking him to come in person and heal him. Jesus told the messenger to answer his master that after his elevation (viz., his Passion and glorification), he would send his disciple to heal him.
In an account by Evagrius the Scholastic, at the end of the 6th century, this letter from Christ became a portrait, an icon "not made by human hands" that Jesus is said to have had sent to the king who wished to see him, and which played a miraculous role in delivering the city of Edessa, besieged by the Persians (544). Later, St. John Damascene tells us that when a painter was sent by King Abgar to paint a portrait of Jesus, he could not bear the radiance of Christ's face. Jesus then took the canvas and applied it to his own face, thus miraculously imprinting his Face on it. In 945, an investigation conducted by the Emperor Constantine on this legend concluded that it would be in Gethsemane that the image would have been formed on the "Mandylion" (i. e. the veil), in contact with the sweat of blood. As a matter of fact, it seems that the image of Edessa is none other than the Holy Shroud of Turin, which is consistent with the inexplicable character, emphasized by various traditions, of the formation of the face on the veil, and the presence of blood on the cloth.
The evocation of the "Face of the Lord" is omnipresent in the Psalms: to seek his Face is to desire to know him, to experience his presence and mercy. Since the Incarnation, we know that this Face is the face of Jesus the Saviour, a face that is perfectly human and at the same time the imprint of the invisible God. In the Gospel according to St. John (14:9), Jesus declares: "He who has seen me has seen the Father". Through faith, the sacred image opens to adoration and into the dimension of the divine Majesty.
The two verses quoted at the bottom of the icon are taken from Psalms; the first one from Psalm 104: "Seek his face evermore"; and the second one from Psalm 33: "Come ye to him and be enlightened: and your faces shall not be confounded."