The half length figure of Christ, gazing directly at the viewer, blessing with his right hand and holding the gospel in his left, is the most enduring and unchanging image in the eastern Christian church. We recognise it as easily in the sixth century as in the thirteenth or the seventeenth. In the early Byzantine periods the book is closed. This changed around the eleventh century to an open book, generally displaying the text from St John’s gospel, here it displays8:12: ΕΓΩ ΕΙΜΙ ΤΟ ΦΩΣ ΤΟΥ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ Ο ΑΚΟΛΟΥΘΩΝ ΕΜΟΙ ΟΥ ΜΗ ΠΕΡΙΠΑΤΗΣΗ ΕΝ ΤΗ ΣΚΟΤΙΑ ΑΛΛ ΕΞΕΙ ΤΟ ΦΩΣ ΤΗΣ ΖΩΗΣ. ‘I am the light of the world. He that followeth me will not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life,’. Christ is clothed in the traditional robes of a philosopher in the Greco-Roman period. The vividly contrasting colours, the blue himation over a maroon chiton are typical for the late sixteenth or seventeenth century.