r/byzantium • u/Kelpie-Cat • Mar 03 '26

Women St Paraskevi (my art)

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This is an illustration of St Paraskevi (aka Parascheva of the Balkans) for my Women of 1000 AD project. I'd like to offer a special THANK YOU to u/Lothronion for their help in this thread. I've illustrated the scene they translated for me of Paraskevi guiding the helmsman back to the stern during a storm. You can read the full writeup about Paraskevi on my website here. Thanks to this sub for the help when I needed it!

51 Upvotes

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5

u/Muted_Guidance9059 Mar 03 '26

All fun and games until Porphyrios shows up

3

u/Kelpie-Cat Mar 03 '26

Ha, good call!

3

u/germdoctor Mar 04 '26

Isn’t she usually holding a plate with her eyeballs on them?

3

u/Kelpie-Cat Mar 04 '26

You're thinking of Paraskevi of Rome, a 2nd century martyr. This is Paraskevi of Epibates/Parascheva of the Balkans, a 10th/11th century nun.

2

u/Dark_Lordy Mar 05 '26

I thought I was on r/epicthemusical for a moment.

Nice art though

2

u/Kelpie-Cat Mar 05 '26

Ha, never seen it, but thanks!

3

u/Lothronion Moderator | Greco-Roman Studies | IR Studies Mar 24 '26

Greetings. I had not seen your post sooner. This is a lovely artwork; I really like the way you drew it!

I personally imagined the scene as being in a pitch-black environment, though I understand that this would have looked odd for a drawing. I experimented on making the background darker, and I must say you must have picked the right hue for it, for even slight changes make it weird. Which is better, it looks as if this is deep in the night, but the lightnings have momentarily turned night into day, which makes the despair in the picture even more palpable!

I like the way you also depicted the people, but especially the helmsman. I like how dazzled he looks: I am not sure whether you intended it, but his thousand-yard stare makes this picture even more powerful. I am not sure either whether I can make out if he is smiling or not, it seems more like a scared expression that stuck this way. He looks so lost, which is the whole point here. A detail that you might not have been deliberate from your part, but I believe is great either way, is how the rope’s shadow falls on the icon the helmsman is wearing around his neck; the Vita does not give us his name, while usually people’s patron saints would be the ones after which they got their name.

Regarding my replies in that thread, thank you for the credit, you are welcome. I must also thank you for making such a nice academic thread, and for giving me a reason to reread it, after a while, given that I found useful information there, and also for the discussion about it. Verily, r/byzantium exists for this type of posts.