St Cuthbert’s Church, Benfieldside – The parish church of Blackhill, Bridgehill, and Shotley Bridge, currently celebrating its 175th anniversary – features a stained glass image that replicates what is considered the world’s most significant portrait of Christ’s face.
Jan van Eyck, a pioneering figure of the Northern Renaissance and one of the greatest Northern European painters, originated this “true image” or “Vera Icon” which is a frontal, red-robed, bust-length image of Jesus. Imitated but never equalled, Van Eyck (c. 1390–1441) left a permanent mark on Renaissance art. His groundbreaking lifelike detail, colour, and texture were so remarkable that his biographer, Bartolomeo Fazio, claimed Van Eyck’s portraits were so realistic that only a voice was missing!
Although the original painting is lost, the image survives through copies produced in Van Eyck’s workshop. A version in Bruges features a jewelled neckline. Another, once part of the Swinburne Collection in Newcastle upon Tyne, also had a jewelled neckline, but is now lost. The Berlin copy bears the inscription + REX + REGVM + (King of Kings) on the neckline.
Uniquely, the best-known copy—the Holy Face in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, one of the oldest galleries in the world—includes characters from the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman alphabets.
How did Shotley Bridge come to possess the replication of the Munich image?
William Wailes, a prominent 19th-century stained glass artist from Newcastle upon Tyne, trained in Munich in the 1830s. There, he saw the Holy Face and was so struck by it that—without the aid of a camera—he faithfully recorded every detail, including the neckline inscriptions, and later incorporated it into the stained glass of the choir vestry in St Cuthbert’s Church, Shotley Bridge.
Symbolism
Characters on the collar of Jesus: + ΕλωΥ + AGLA +
ΕλωΥ translates as “God” in Greek.
AGLA is a Latin acronym for the Hebrew phrase “Atah Gibor Le-olam Adonai”, meaning “You, O Lord, are eternally powerful.”
Hidden in Christ’s beard: The first and last letters of the Greek alphabet—Alpha and Omega—symbolising Christ as the beginning and the end.
The image is encircled by a halo and surmounted by a red cross, upon which is superimposed the Star (or Shield) of David, a symbol that has appeared on the flag of Israel since 1948. ‘IHS’ is an abbreviation of Jesus’ name, derived from the first three letters of the Greek spelling ΙΗΣΟΥΣ (Iēsous). The Greek letter Σ (sigma) is represented as ‘S’ in the Latin alphabet.
By Paul Heatherington
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