ABSTRACT
Patron images are often found in provincial 'pockets', such as in the cave churches of Cappadocia,3 the small churches of central and northern Greece4 (particularly in Kastoria5) and in churches on Cyprus.6 This distribution of course reflects various circumstances which allowed the structures containing the images to survive, rather than the original distribution of patron images, but its widespread nature is relevant to exercises of comparison, in the sense that images made in areas so distant from one another are unlikely to have any direct connection (such as travelling artists, or even travelling patrons). Recurrent features, therefore, particularly when they appear over a long chronological period, probably represent empire-wide tradition rather than regional developments. Such comparison does, indeed, yield a common iconographic vocabulary for patron images, the most easily identifiable element of which is the figure of the patron, usually standing, holding a model of the church in which the image is located; he/she presents this model to a divine figure, usually Christ or the Virgin, sometimes a saint.7 Another basic type shows the patron without a church-model, simply standing or kneeling in the presence of a divine figure, usually with hands raised in a gesture of supplication. In most cases, with or without church-model, the patrons are drawn to a smaller scale than the divine figure. Although, as noted above, most surviving patron imagery is middle late Byzantine, these iconographic types are of long pedigree and can be found in examples going back to the early Byzantine period.8 The
nature of patronage recorded by means of a donor image varies, and is often something less than responsibility for the fentire establishment. Thus, in many instances more than one patron figure appears in a single building, each in its own konographical context: at Yusuf Koq Kilise in Av^ilar (Cappadocia), for example, three patrons are shown in separate panels and probably represent three individuals who made contributions to the church.9
