NOTED HELLENES: Yannis Tsarouchis paints the Virgin on the front lines

The picture depicts the great painter Yannis Tsarouchis during the Greek-Italian war, holding the "Virgin of Victory", the moving image he painted while on the Albanian Front.

Yannis Tsarouchis was drafted in 1939 and served in Koutsi, Albania. During the war, he was charged withr the camouflage of military installations and uniforms, but at the same time, he did not stop painting, creating portraits of the soldiers who were bravely fighting the Italians.

The story of Our Lady of Victory was narrated in the book "Testimonies" 40 -'41 by K. Hatzipateras. As he had revealed, the idea of ​​the icon came when he heard a warrant officer during mess describing that he had seen a vision with the Virgin Mary. The recruit had reported that he had initially thought she was an Albanian spy and raised his revolver to shoot her, but then the woman raised her palm and said, "Do not strike, I have something to say: At Easter you will be home ".

The unit commander decided to build a church for Panagia at the point that the soldier pointed out and asked Tsarouchis to paint the frescoes. However, the building where the church was to be built, an old mill, was dangerous and the target of the Italians, so Tsarouchis made icons as an iconostasis on four planks.

Read the story of the picture, as Tsarouchis had narrated:

This place was much fired upon by the Italians and I was fearful. But I accepted to make four icons for the iconostasis if they found four planks. My captain, the late Georgopoulos, had paints with him in the hope that I could make paintings of battles. These paints were used at the beginning of the war to camouflage the nickel on the commander's car. And later on, to make some portraits of this captain, who was an art and book lover. After a lot of research, a lid from a box was found. Here I painted "Our Lady of Victory", having as a template a painted Virgin Mary that circulated on postcards. When it was over, all the soldiers were amazed, and the captain bargained with me to make one for Corfu. The commander of the battalion stayed away from our tents in a tent camouflaged with strawberry trees. His tent was far off and so he and sent a motorcyclist to fetch me, who was extremely handsome and very manly, to bring me where he was staying. I took the icon with me and rode on the motorcycle rear.

As we were going to the commander, soldiers from Arta, who had camped there, almost blocked the road, and had been informed about the existence of the icon. Already, my humble work, which had not yet driedt, had gained a reputation for a miraculous image. At that time an alarm was sounded. That is, a soldier with a trumpet wrapped in khaki cloth made from gaiters, blasted the alarm. The motorcyclist and I fell to the ground, according to the orders we had. None of the soldiers from Arta did the same.
"Comrade," one said, "You are holding the Virgin and are you afraid?"
"No, my friend," I replied, "but I am a soldier and obey the orders of my superiors."
When the commander saw me in a beard and badly fixed gaiters, he said to me, "Are you a soldier or some Bulgarian prisoner? Let's see the picture. You have made the Virgin Mary wild, like some Arvanitissa. And Christ is also grim."
To calm him, I told him somethingfrom the Psalms of David: "Blessed be the LORD my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight." "I see you arealso a God fearing man," he replied.
He called the barber to shave me and a soldier to help me wrap my gaiters well. I felt like an actor in the cinema that was being prepared him for filming. And the commander told a second lieutenant to take a photo with me and the icon together. "Now that he is a decent Greek soldier".
When I came back after the war to Athens, they handed me this photo and I still have it.
The icon depicted the Virgin Mary with Christ and at the bottom her miracles. To the left, the soldier who tried to shoot the Virgin Mary and to the right the soldiers who are going to build the mill to turn it into a church.