free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

The Great Island
Toplou’s pride is a large icon called 0 Lord Thou Art Great: ‘the work
of John Kornaros when he was 25 years of age . . . in 1770. ’ The picture
is inspired by a prayer composed by Patriarch Sophroniou of Jerusalem,
from which I quote:
O Lord, Thou art great and wondrous are Thy works and no word shall suffice to hymn
Thy wonders. The sun hymns Thee, the moon glorifies Thee, the stars intercede with Thee,
the light is subject to Thee, the abysses tremble before thee, the water-springs serve Thee,
Thou hast stretched out the heavens, Thou hast founded the earth upon the waters, Thou
hast fenced in the sea with sand, Thou hast poured forth the air in breezes. . . .
Angelic powers serve Thee, the choruses of Archangels reverence Thee . . .
Thou hast blessed the waters of Jordan sending down from heaven Thy All-Holy
Spirit. . . .
Thou art our Lord who drowned our sin through the waters of the Flood in the time of
Noah, who delivered Thy people through the sea from the slavery of Pharaoh, who burst
open the rock in the desert, and waters gushed out and torrents flooded forth, who through
water and the fire of the sun delivered Israel from the error of Baal.
The icon is a grand design in illustration of this prayer. Each of the
sixty-one scenes is labelled with its own phrase – ‘The moon glorifies
Thee ’ next to the moon and so on – and there are other phrases too
which represent the words spoken by the figures portrayed. The Holy
Trinity is surrounded by the whole worshipping universe – sun, moon
and stars, the heavenly bodies represented by the signs of the zodiac,
angels and archangels. In between the scriptural scenes the artist has
poured his talent into a host of details, marvellous or extravagant.
There are monsters, snakes, a gryphon, a wild pig, a foxwith long, rigid
tail, a lion, a dwarf elephant the same size as the lion, birds, a longnecked
beast like a dinosaur, a malignant ape. Sea monsters too, in
Jordan water, with wicked, grinning faces. The ram which is about to
appear to Abraham has a sweet expression, a generous bushy tail. The
blood-red sun and moon contain angels curled up within them. At the
bottom of the picture, on either side of Christ’s descent into Hades, the
Tigris and the Euphrates, two of the rivers of Paradise, wind down
toward the sea. There are swans proudly swimming on the Tigris, and
one is preening himself on the bank. The river flows under a threearched
bridge, part of a little Italian town of sun-warmed stone walls
and red roof-tiles. Two peasants drive a yoke of oxen over the rich
earth. Cypresses shoot up like needles. And best of all, between two fir
trees where the river bends, two white animals are sitting on the bank,
clearly each other’s mates, with long curly graceful necks and rubbery
jointless legs, basking in total innocence. All this in one small corner of
the icon.
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