25 August - 19 December: Sacred Faces - Icons in Oxford

Christ Church Picture Gallery

Icons are used in the Eastern Orthodox Church to focus worshippers' prayers. Their form and function have hardly changed over the last fifteen centuries and their spiritual message is retained even in a museum setting. This exhibition will show Greek and Russian icons from the Picture Gallery and the Ashmolean Museum which are normally not on view. Among them are a St George and the Dragon from around 1500 which has just been cleaned and restored to its former splendour and two Ashmolean fragments from a large Last Judgement, which are certainly the most important Russian icons preserved in Oxford. Further works, given to Christ Church in 1980 by C. R. Patterson provide an overview of Russian religious art in the imperial period.

Opening Hours

1st May to 30th September

Monday to Saturday - 10:30am to 5pm
Sunday - 2pm to 5pm

1st October to 30th April

Monday to Saturday - 10:30am to 1pm & 2pm to 4:30pm
Sunday - 2pm to 4:30pm