The Angel of the Desert

Orthodox iconography depicts the Forerunner as the gaunt desert ascetic in camel’s-hair tunic, but its most distinctive type gives him wings — the “Angel of the Desert” (Greek Ho Angelos), in which the wings render visible the prophecy that John is the messenger sent before the Lord (Mal. 3:1; Mark 1:2), the same Greek word angelos meaning both “messenger” and “angel.” This file treats that iconography: the ascetic dress, the winged type and its rationale, the scrolls of repentance, the icon of John bearing his own severed head, and the Deesis, in which he stands with the Theotokos on either side of the enthroned Christ as the two great intercessors.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Forerunner)

The Ascetic of the Desert

The Forerunner’s basic iconographic type follows the Gospel description of his life and dress with literal exactness. He is shown lean and weathered, his hair and beard unkempt and matted, his frame thin from fasting — the figure of one who “was in the wilderness till the day of his manifestation to Israel” (Luke 1:80). He wears the rough garment the Gospels name: “John was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist” (Mark 1:6; Matt. 3:4), often with a green or dark mantle thrown over it. The camel’s-hair tunic and the gauntness are not incidental but theological: the icon shows the man whose food was “locusts and wild honey” (Mark 1:6) and whose whole bodily form preaches the repentance he proclaimed, so that the ascetic dress is itself a sermon (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, on the icon of the Forerunner; see The Wilderness Years).

The Winged “Angel of the Desert”

The most striking and distinctively Eastern type adds great wings to the desert ascetic — the icon known in Greek as Ho Angelos tēs erēmou, the Angel of the Desert. The wings are not a claim that John was an angelic being; they are an exegetical image, the painter’s way of rendering a prophecy. The Gospel of Mark opens by applying to John the word of Malachi: “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way” (Mark 1:2, quoting Mal. 3:1), and the same identification is on the Lord’s own lips — “This is he of whom it is written, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before thy face’” (Matt. 11:10; Luke 7:27). The decisive point is linguistic: the Hebrew mal’akh and the Greek angelos alike mean “messenger,” and angelos is precisely the word the New Testament uses both for the heavenly hosts and for John the messenger. The iconography seizes on this double sense and depicts the messenger with the wings of the angel — making visible in paint the very text that names John God’s emissary sent before the Lord (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, on the winged Forerunner and the angelos of Mal. 3:1 / Mark 1:2). The same image is reinforced by the Gospel’s word that John comes “in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17), the prophet who was himself caught up by a heavenly host (2 Kings 2:11); the winged Forerunner gathers Malachi’s “messenger” and Elijah’s translation into a single figure of the prophet who stands at the threshold of heaven and earth.

The Scrolls of Repentance

The winged Forerunner, like most icons of John, holds an open scroll, and the text upon it is drawn from his own Gospel preaching. Most commonly it bears the opening cry of his ministry, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2) — the word with which John appears and with which Christ Himself will begin to preach (cf. Matt. 4:17). Where the icon emphasizes John’s witness to Christ rather than his call to repentance, the scroll instead reads “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), the testimony John gives when he sees Jesus coming to him at the Jordan. The two scroll-texts hold together the whole of the Forerunner’s office: the prophet who calls Israel to repentance and the witness who points away from himself to the Lamb (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons; see The Wilderness Years).

The Forerunner Bearing His Own Head

A further and arresting variant — frequently combined with the winged type — shows John holding in one hand, or in a chalice or on a platter, his own severed head. The image does not depict a moment of narrative but compresses the whole of his witness: the living Forerunner displays the head taken from him by Herod (Mark 6:27–28), so that his martyrdom and his prophecy are shown at once, the prophet who pointed to the Lamb here himself offered up. In the fullest form of the type the platter with the head is set beside, or held out toward, the figure of John, and the wings rise above — the messenger, the herald of repentance, and the martyr gathered into a single icon (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons; on the death itself, see The Cycle of Feasts and the feast of the Beheading, Aug. 29). The placing of the severed head on the platter also recalls the eucharistic resonance the type carries when the head is shown in a chalice — the martyr’s witness offered as the Lamb’s was offered.

The Deesis: The Two Great Intercessors

The fixed liturgical place of the Forerunner in iconography is the Deesis (Greek deēsis, “supplication” or “intercession”) — the central composition in which Christ is shown enthroned or as Pantocrator in the midst, with the Theotokos inclined toward Him on His right and John the Forerunner inclined toward Him on His left, both turned in attitude of intercession with their hands extended in prayer toward the Lord between them. The Deesis renders in a single image the Church’s understanding of John’s rank: the Mother of God and the Forerunner are the two foremost intercessors before Christ, “more honorable than the cherubim” on the one hand and “greatest born of women” on the other (cf. Matt. 11:11), set on either side of the Judge to plead for the world (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, on the Deesis as the icon of the Church’s intercession). The composition is ancient in Byzantine art, appearing in apse and templon programs, and it became the organizing principle of an entire tier of the Russian iconostasis — the Deesis tier (Russian deisusnyi chin), the largest row of icons, in which the central Christ enthroned is flanked first by the Theotokos and the Forerunner and then by the archangels, apostles, and saints, the whole Church shown gathered in supplication before its Lord (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, on the Deesis tier of the iconostasis). In the Deesis the theology of the icons and the theology of the feasts meet: the John whom the calendar commemorates second only to the Theotokos stands in the icon exactly there — at Christ’s left hand, second only to the Theotokos, interceding.

The Image and the Theology of the Icon

That John can be shown winged, bearing his own head, and holding a scroll that speaks is possible only because of the Orthodox theology of the holy image: the icon is not a portrait constrained to a single historical instant but a confession of who the saint is before God, painted according to the Church’s reading of Scripture (see Icons and Iconoclasm). The winged Forerunner is faithful precisely because it renders the Gospel’s own word for him, angelos; the head on the platter is faithful because it shows the martyrdom the Church confesses; the Deesis is faithful because it shows the intercession the Church asks. The iconography of the Forerunner is thus, like his hymnography, the Church’s theology of John made visible — and it carries the same confession the liturgy carries: that he is the messenger before the Lord, the voice before the Word, and, with the Theotokos, the great intercessor for the world (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons; cf. The Forerunner in Hades, the theology the iconography serves).

References

The Gospel According to Matthew 3:2, 4; 4:17; 11:10. Revised Standard Version. (“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”; the camel’s-hair garment; “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face.”)
The Gospel According to Mark 1:2, 6; 6:27–28. Revised Standard Version. (The Malachi citation applied to John; the camel’s hair and locusts; the severed head on a platter.)
The Gospel According to Luke 1:17, 80; 7:27. Revised Standard Version. (“In the spirit and power of Elijah”; the wilderness; the messenger.)
The Gospel According to John 1:29. Revised Standard Version. (“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” the second scroll-text.)
Malachi 3:1. Revised Standard Version. (“Behold, I send my messenger” — the prophetic ground of the winged “Angel of the Desert.”)
2 Kings 2:11. Revised Standard Version. (Elijah taken up by the heavenly host, joined to John “in the spirit and power of Elijah.”)
Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982. (The icon of the Forerunner, the winged “Angel of the Desert” and the angelos of Mal. 3:1 / Mark 1:2, the scroll-texts, the icon of John bearing his head, and the Deesis as the icon of the Church’s intercession and the organizing tier of the iconostasis.)