ABSTRACT
In the twelfth-century typikon written for the monastery of the Mother of God Kosmosoteira at Pherrai, Isaak Komnenos, brother of Emperor John II, addresses the transfer of furnishings from a tomb monument that he had already set up at the Church of the Chora in Constantinople where he had intended to be buried, to the site of his new tomb in the Kosmosoteira.1 Along with other furnishings, Isaak desires to have the portraits of his parents brought to his new tomb, but he gives explicit instructions to leave his own portrait, described as executed “in the vanity of [his] boyhood,” behind. What precisely Isaak was referring to has been a point of speculation for many scholars over the years, including the extent to which the fourteenthcentury mosaic of the Deesis in the esonarthex of the Chora featuring Isaak in prokynesis before the interceding Virgin reflects this original portrait.2
