Saint Luke, possible painter of the Virgin Hodegetria icon

It is the Mother of all icons, because it inspired all the others: the Virgin Hodegetria, in Greek "the one who shows the way", reminds Christians where to look, especially in dark moments. With a delicate gesture, Mary points the way to God, who is not represented by an adult Christ but by the divine child - a reminder of Jesus’s admonition in Mark’s Gospel: "Amen, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will not enter it" (Mk 10:15).

The age-old representation of the Virgin and Child of Hodegetria, a very popular icon in the West, originated in the East. According to tradition, the very first one was made by St. Luke himself in the Holy Land and was later brought to Blachernitissa, in Constantinople.

It is probably because St. Luke understood Mary so well that he is believed to have painted Mary’s portrait, and that the first Hodegetria icon was attributed to him.

There is no proof that St. Luke knew how to paint, but he did know the Virgin Mary best: out of 152 verses of the New Testament evoking the Mother of God, 90 are from him. He was able to evoke the personality of the Virgin Mary with great perception. Was it not he who said she "retained all these events and meditated on them in her heart" (Lk 2:19), thus rendering the way in which Mary relived in her memory the deeds of Jesus when he was still a child?

Arthur Herlin

Excerpted and translated from: L’Hodigitria : l’icône de la Vierge qui montre le chemin