About this print

Christ Pantocrator, John 14:6

An icon-style Christ looks straight at the viewer, blessing with his right hand and cradling a closed Gospel book in his left, with his answer to Thomas written below.

An icon in watercolor

Unlike most prints in the collection, this one faces us head-on. Christ is shown from the chest up, with long center-parted brown hair, a short beard and calm, direct eyes. Behind his head is a large golden halo marked with the arms of a cross. He wears a cream tunic with a coral mantle over one shoulder and a slate-blue cloak over the other.

His right hand is raised with two fingers extended in the traditional gesture of blessing. In his left he holds a thick book bound in ocher leather, a red cross on its cover. For once the lettering sits below the figure rather than above: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”.

Christ Pantocrator and John 14:6

Pantocrator is a Greek word usually translated “Almighty” or “Ruler of all”. The image type is one of the oldest in Christian art; the best-known early example, painted in the sixth century, is kept at St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai. In Orthodox and Byzantine churches it often looks down from the central dome, and it is familiar to Catholics from mosaics in Rome, Sicily and Ravenna. The book is the Gospel, the blessing hand shows him as teacher and priest.

The verse comes from the evening of the Last Supper. Jesus has told his disciples he is going to prepare a place for them and that they know the way. Thomas answers honestly that they don't even know where he is going, so how can they know the way? The full reply in the King James Bible: “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

Jesus does not give directions; he points to himself. The earliest believers were known simply as followers of “the Way”, a name the Book of Acts uses several times.

Where to hang an icon print

Icons are traditionally placed in an east-facing corner of the home, but this print fits any quiet wall: a study, a prayer corner or above a reading chair. It is a lasting gift for confirmation, a godchild's baptism, or a friend drawn to the older traditions of the Church.

Read John 14 and what it means