I saw this  icon recently at an exhibition at the Ballarat Art Gallery and was utterly transfixed. This particular piece is probably 15th to 17th century and is held in a private collection in Sydney. Known in Russia as Spas Blagoe Molchanie or ‘The Saviour of the Blessed Silence’ or alternatively ‘The Angel of Great Counsel’, it is an example of a complex iconographic type that is also represented in Greek iconography and associated with Hesychia, the personification of silence. Continue reading “Blessed Silence” →