The Saint of Sinai is depicted holding a cross in her right hand, and wearing an imperial dress, as is the standard in icon depictions of her since post-Byzantine times. Her gold-embroidered headdress was already a standard item in fifteenth century Cretan icons. The dress and mainly the “loros” scarf are radiant, and allude to verses from the Saint’s feast hymnology that praise her radiant presence.
The plasticity of forms, the fabric folds, and the overall appearance of the Saint in this impressive icon probably indicate that this is the work of a Cretan painter.
In the late eighteenth century, the icon was mounted on a marble icon stand made by the stone-mason Procopios, next to the reliquary of the Saint inside the Bema of the Katholikon.
