Christ Church Picture Gallery’s Sacred Faces — Icons in Oxford is a small but special show of Greek and Russian icons from the Picture Gallery and the Ashmolean Museum, none of which are normally on display. With icons dating from after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 until the 19th century, it shows the medieval icon painting tradition carried on into modern times in Greece and Russia, how messages were sometimes conveyed by means of complex compositions, and how at times icon masters absorbed stylistic influences from Western Europe.

With only 15 icons, three cabinets to see, and a few objects such as 17th-century Russian liturgical plates and chalice from St Barnabas, Jericho, that came to Oxford in the late 19th century, I could enjoy looking at the details, aided by the exhibition guide. The intricate New Testament Scenes, for instance, on portable folding icons, care-worn from centuries of veneration and contemplation; characteristic wide-eyed portraits of saints and holy figures looking directly out at viewer, devotee; the Madonna of the Sign wearing the crown of a heavenly queen, the Child emerging from a chalice; and on another, four miracle-working images of the Virgin as venerated in Russia, each subtly different.

Two St George and the Dragon icons made a striking comparison: one from Crete around 1500, just cleaned and restored to its former glory, and one from 17th-century mainland Greece. Both show essentially the same saint as cavalryman in armour on a prancing white steed, but the monster differs: serpent-like in the Cretan, more a dragon as we know it in the Greek; and in one, a miraculously rescued boy sits behind the saint, part of the cult of St George that became widespread.

The exhibition, co-curated by Dr Georgi Parpulov, Department Lecturer in Byzantine Art and Archaeology, also has two noteworthy views of Paradise, ca. 1500 AD. Very unusual, apparently, as Paradise scenes normally form part of larger Last Judgement pictures. They are, according to Christ Church, “the most important Russian icons preserved in Oxford”. Until December 22.