The Hodegetria (She Who Shows the Way)

The Theotokos holds the Child on one arm and points to Him with the other hand. She is not looking at Him and not looking away from the viewer: she is directing attention, and the gesture is the whole content of the type. The Child is shown as a small man rather than a baby, blessing, holding a scroll. The original hung in the Hodegon monastery at Constantinople, was carried round the walls in processions, and was lost when the city fell. Tradition ascribes the first of them to the Evangelist Luke, which the Church understands as a claim about authority rather than about brushwork.