Legacy Icons reviews upcoming prints with Saint Catherine's Monastery representatives

New York City – November 22, 2023

As guests of Saint Catherine's Monastery, representatives from Legacy Icons attended the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Africa & Byzantium exhibition. The exhibition features early Byzantine iconography from the Monastery's collection, and Archbishop Damianos of Sinai graciously extended the invitation.

After viewing the exhibit, Archbishop Damianos and Archimandrite Justin Sinaites, the Monastery's curator, spent over an hour inspecting samples of Legacy Icons' first three replica icons now available for the benefit of Saint Catherine's and their critical work of preserving Christian history.

Viewing the Legacy Icons museum-quality print of the famous Christ Pantocrator, His Beatitude remarked simply, "It is perfect."

Father Justin, who photographed the original icon that has been housed at the desert monastery for some 15 centuries, explained how difficult the reflective wax encaustic image is to reproduce. The classical four-color palette, with its deep browns and purples made from wine dregs, is particularly challenging to capture in printed form. But seeing Legacy Icons' work, with a smile he said, "You see many reproductions [of the Christ Pantocrator icon], but they don't get the colors right. I admire what you did, these are very good."

Comparing it to another manufactured reproduction, His Beatitude said of Legacy Icons' work, "This is more accurate color."

While the icons of Saint Catherine's Monastery are holy objects, they are also historical documents. In an age where photo retouching is standard practice, Father Justin noted that there is a temptation to get rid of imperfections, and a balance must be found between giving viewers the images they expect and showing the historical image as it is.

He explained, for example: "People make theological interpretations about what's the significance of this line here [below Christ's left eye]. You can't just wipe it out."

With the blessing of Archbishop Damianos and the Monastery, the Mount Sinai Collection by Legacy Icons offers the very highest quality prints of these historic images, made from the Monastery's own archival digital photographs. Every purchase of these museum-quality replicas helps fund and support the Monastery's priceless work of preserving Christian history.

We pray this relationship between Legacy Icons and Saint Catherine's Monastery will continue and grow as we work together to bring the treasures of the historic Christian faith to future generations.