In the Post-Byzantine Art Collection of the National Museum of Serbia there is another group of very similar Cretan icons from the 16th and 17th centuries, on which the Virgin Mary is with a child who is playing with or caressing his mother, but whose facial expression shows the emotion of fear. That moment is associated with the Holy Encounter and the realization of the predestination of the Passion. The Mother of God with a child with mutually nestled cheeks is called Glycophilus. A moment of tenderness overshadowed by fear shows the human nature of the God-Man and thus underlines the truth of the Incarnation. The specimen from the Collection, where the child is represented reclining gently in the mother’s arms, is a model attributed to the painter Angelos.

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