File:Vinica Christopher George.jpg

English: Early ceramic icon of Saint Christopher and Saint George.

One of the Vinica icons, an exceptional discovery of terra-cotta icons (26 whole, 20 fragmentary and more than 100 smaller and larger fragments combined into an additional 14 icons), excavated in 1985/6 near Vinica, Macedonia. The icons are rectangular (c. 32 x 20 x 4.5 cm) or nearly square (31 x 29 x 4.5 cm). As they combine Greek and Roman inscriptions, they are dated to before 733, when Macedonia was still under Roman rule.

St Christopher is cynocephalous, the icon was made at a time when this saint was believed to belong to the exotic people with this feature. Both saints are standing on serpents with human heads, and are aiming at the heads of the serpents with lances. Christopher is holding a cross in his left hand, George is holding a round shield in his right.

The horizontal inscription reads D(EU)S D(OMI)N(U)S VIRTUTUM / [E]X[AUDI ]NO[S] (Psalm 84:9), the vertical inscriptions label the saints as XPOFERUS and GEORGIUS.

Literature:

• Elizabeta Dimitrova, The Ceramic Relief Plaques from Vincia (2016), 12f.[1]
• Jan Bazant, "St. George at Prague Castle and Perseus: an Impossible Encounter?", Studia Hercynia 19.1-2 (2015), 189-201 (fig. 4).