Thanks to Christine Schlesser, the Director of the Trinity Iconography Institute, for bringing the following to my notice.
Princeton University has a catalog of images of icons from Mt Sinai which was obtained from expeditions made to the monastery in the 1950s and 1960s. The images have been recently upgraded and the collection is available online. As Christine wrote:
Princeton University just updated a website on the expedition of the late 1950s/early 1960s to St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mt. Sinai, where there is a repository of the world’s oldest icons. This collection is unique in that it documents, in color and condition, all of the monastery’s icons after cleaning and restoration in the 1950s and 1960s. These photos have not been digitally altered, except for cropping and rotating. Princeton’s Visual Resource Center digitized and catalogued the collection of several thousand color images (5 × 7 inch color Ektachrome transparencies and 35mm slides) of icons in the Monastery of Saint Catherine made by the joint expeditions.
The images are available for free for non-commercial and educational purpose and permission may be granted for other purposes.
To browse the collection follow the link here.
“Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” The Sinai Icon Collection , accessed January 27, 2020, http://vrc.princeton.edu/sinai/items/show/7216.
When I was searching through the collection, this one caught my eye. The only information I have about it is in the citation. The draughtsmanship is exquisite - I am thinking here especially of the delicate flowing lines that describe the head and facial features. This is something that should be studied by those wishing to learn iconography. This conforms to the stylistic prototype will being anatomically sound. If you look at the length of the forearm, for example, there is a foreshortening effect caused by the fact that the elbows of the patriarchs are tucked into their hips and are someway behind the hands.
I encourage people to explore this treasury of images.
