Bernd 06/09/2019 (Sun) 15:47:32 No.27053 del
>>27052
I left the first one (if we observe the crown from the front, he would be the first one to notice if not for Jesus) to the last because it's another anomaly which deserves a more detailed inspection.
The last apostle is Bartholomew, or in Latinized: Bartholomaeus. Or more than likely he is. Because we can't see this icon today. I tried hard to find a photograph with google online, and elsewhere in articles, and in books which shows at least a few letters at the corners, but no avail.
So the Pantokrator at the front simply covers his icon. You can see how the ornaments on the rim bend a little inside. But maybe that wasn't the case all the time. At least two drawings of the Bartholomew icon were preserved from the 19th century, which means there had to had been some view in.
The first one is from exactly 1800. This is fairly unknown work and I had to take a screenshot of a modern book which has this picture in it. This drawing doesn't give us a full picture only the top of the head of the dude and the label: ARTHOLO. Granted the artist made some mistakes elsewhere, enough to compare his version of John with the real one we can say he wasn't the most accurate, but he gave back the inscription of John's precisely with the h-n ligature, the space filling motifs and all that, so I would assume the Artholo caption is precise too.
The problem with this drawing would be that it was published in a book of previously mentioned researcher who is considered to be "pseudo-scientific" and I don't think anyone else mentions this among the modern scholars. However other 19th century authors know about this "Artholo" inscription or at least the existence of this drawing - one article even mentions that the "SCSB" is missing due to a nail which was driven through and damaged it. I found another book of the same writer purchasable online but not what was published in 1800. So both the artist and the picture exists surely.
The next one was published in 1886. That says SCSBARTHOLO and depicts a full figured apostle. It's in a book of a renowned scientist of the Crown-research. His picture is used by everyone since then, but neither had the opportunity to personally take a look. He wasn't the drawer, but was part of the team - and probably the leader of it - which was allowed to inspect the crown. The artist however had very good eyes and reliable hands, that we can state. So since this picture was the basis of all later analysis' there was nothing new published about this Artholo since then. Noteworthy: his version still ends with -artholo, and doesn't have the -VS ending the other saints have.