Just over a year ago, I made a post entitled All 3 Oil Paintings of Nikiforos Kalogeras have been acquired, and, just this past week, I discovered, not a new oil painting of Nikiforos Kalogeras, but what appears to be a mural on a wall.

If I ever get around to finishing editing Kalogeras’ biography, which requires the help of someone who knows Katharevousa better than I do, you will be able to read on my website that young Nikolaos went to Mount Athos in 1851, at the age of 16, and was tonsured a monk at some point thereafter at the Xenophontos Monastery, receiving the name Nikiforos.

This detail concerning his tonsure there is significant because the Xenophontos Monastery is thus the “place of his repentance,” (this is what monks say about the monastery where they are first tonsured monks) and, after becoming a renowned theologian and hierarch of the Church later in his life, was subsequently (from what I understand thus far) honoured with a fresco somewhere at Xenophontos.

This fresco can be viewed here. The cracks in the paint look to me like the wear and tear on a wall, and not the cracking and peeling of paint on a canvas.

Anyway, I sent an email through that website’s contact form asking if they have a higher resolution image of that painting that they can send me. I am not sure if I also asked what rights I can have to the image, if they decide they want to send it to me, because I had a very difficult time sending the message. It continually failed to send without actually telling me the reason. I had to keep shortening my message and I thought it was failing because I had links in the text, so I may have removed them. I hope I get a response from someone, otherwise I will have to figure out another way of contacting them.

I am quite happy to be once again working on the portion of this project dealing with Nikiforos Kalogeras. It gives me a breath of fresh air to be doing something that is not just repetitive translation day in and day out. I hope I can get this image as well and add it to the collection.