Holy Face of Laon Slavic 13th century This icon represents the famous face cloth or Mandylion imprinted with his likeness that Jesus is supposed to have sent to the Armenian King Abgar of Edessa. There it was long venerated as a protective palladion but in 944 was brought triumphantly to Constantinople. renowned throughout the Byzantine period of Iconoclasm as the greatest of "acheiropoieta" images (ones not made by human hands) and cited to prove divine sanction of images, the Mandylion was displayed for pilgrim veneration in Constantinople and celebrated in an annual feast on August 16. Yet it acquired little place in the public propaganda of the state and was eventually lost in the terrible wake of 1204, when Constantinople fell to the Latin West. What it failed to acquire as a relic, though, it did as an image: widely represented in twelfth century murals, it developed by the end of the century a dinstinctive version for devotional contemplation on icons. This icon is among one of the earliest examples of the iconic version.