Panagia tis Kyras (Livadia)
The Panagia tis Kyras (Παναγία της Κυράς) is a Greek Orthodox cross- domed church from the 12th century in the internationally unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus , near the village of Livadia (Sazlıköy) on the Karpas Peninsula. This is unusual in that five of the six cross-domed churches in Cyprus from this era are located on the peninsula.
Its apse , only 2.10 m in diameter , which formed the east end of an ancient predecessor building, contained an early Christian mosaic from the 7th century with the singularly depicted Mother of God . This mosaic was only uncovered by EJW Hawkins in 1961 and was restored in the process. After individual stones had been broken out and used there by the Greek population as a miracle cure for skin and blood diseases for decades, shortly after the Turkish invasion in 1974 internationally networked art thieves apparently stole the art treasures on the ceilings and walls without hindrance and in a targeted manner (comparable to the case of the Panagia Kanakaria , a few kilometers east).
Thanks to the restoration from 1961, however, it was possible to reconstruct the image program. The approximately 1.20 m high Mother of God was depicted entirely alone as a standing orante against a golden background. There was no such representation in any other altar area of a church. Her head was surrounded by a golden nimbus , which in turn was framed with turquoise tesserae . The face and hands are made of very small stones, which are usually only 2 to 3 mm in size.
The front wall of the late antique apse was also provided with a mosaic, possibly one of the archangels.
literature
- Arthur Megaw, Ernest Hawkins: A fragmentary mosaic of the Orant Virgin in Cyprus. In: Actes du XIV Congrès international des études byzantines. Vol. 3, Bucharest 1976, pp. 363-366.
- Dieter Korol : The late antique Christian wall and vault mosaics of Cyprus (5th-7th century) and their recent history. In: Sabine Rogge (Ed.): Cyprus. Island in the focus of cultures. Münster 2000, pp. 193–197.
Web links
- Panagia tis Kyras in the travel magazine Schwarzaufweiß .
- Fragments from the mosaic of the apse ... (PDF; 363 kB) Section in a brochure on the Byzantine Museum in the cultural center of the Archbishop Makarios Foundation, ed. by the Cyprus Tourism Organization, p. 30 ff.
Coordinates: 35 ° 24 '18.32 " N , 34 ° 1' 48.43" E