Byzantine Sacred Art: Orthodox Icons and Iconography

Byzantine Icons

Being an integral part of Holy Liturgy, Byzantine iconography is a sacred art. It has remained an ideal representation of Holy Figures in their transcendent, not profane (human and natural), body and form.

Byzantine iconography is focused exclusively on the image and unburdened with unnecessary decoration, flowers, embellishments, borders, swirls and branches. The only traditional mediums for panel icons remain egg tempera mixed with pure earth and mineral pigments, and encaustic.

The first Iconographer was St. Apostle Luke, who was a physician and a painter by profession and is credited for the first icons/portraits of Holy Theotokos (Mother of God) and Saint Peter. These were painted after the Pentecost, after the Holy Apostle received the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

The sacred art of iconography we have today has fully developed during Byzantine era.

Icons are a form of testimony to the Incarnation of the Word, they bear witness to the redemption of matter in all creation, as declared by the Incarnation. Their themes cannot be changed and the mode of depiction must lead the onlooker to the world of Divine Reality.

Both the Holy Tradition of miraculously created icons and actual examples (the earliest icons that have survived to our times are kept in the treasury of the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai) show that the first icons were portraits. In fact, the basic theme of the icon is the Holy Portrait, i.e. the portrait of a Holy Person not represented in the corruptible state of the flesh, but in a state revealing his partaking of divine life. The need of the faithful to communicate personally with the sanctified man made the authenticity of the portrait of great importance. The created prototypes became part of the living Tradition of the Church. The fixation of the type meant that everything ephemeral was removed so that the transcendental quality of the image could be revealed.

Icons of Christ

Among the various images of Christ, the most dominant on icons is portrait icon of Christ with dark thick hair, parted in the middle, with a slight wave, falling like 'the streams of river' usually over his right shoulder. Known as the Pantocrator, the Almighty, this icon reveals the God-Man who fills every thing. It is He, as Theophilos of Antioch says, Who holds and embraces everything. This image manifests the Glory of God, of which Paul, Cyril of Jerusalem and other Holy Fathers speak.

It is important to note that prototypes cannot, by any means, render visually the essence of God, which remains unapproachable to men. They can only suggest that which is revealed to humanity in the Person of Christ and within the bounds of the Church teachings.

Icons of Mother of God

Icons of Holy Theotokos are distinguished by the dignity of her appearance. Her deep red veil, falling over Her head and shoulders, bears three star-crosses, symbols of the Trinity, Whose instrument was Mary for the Incarnation of the Son of God.

The most common type of icon of Mother of God is that of the Hodegetria, named after the most venerated icon in Constantinople, that was found in the Monastery of the Hodegon. It was the palladium of the city, carried in processions and in the battlefield. According to tradition, it was painted by St. Luke and sent to Constantinople from Jerusalem by the Empress Eudocia. It depicted Holy Theotokos holding the Christ Child in her left hand.

While the Hodegetria shows Her Son Who is The Way, representing a Christologic doctrine, the Eleousa or Glykophilousa and their variants, such as the Virgin Kardiotissa or the Virgin with the Playing Child, stress Mary's maternal side.

Dionysious of Fourna, the famous Greek iconographer and the author of the Painter's Manual, says that he wishes the icon of Theotokos to be reflected incessantly on the mirror of the beholder's soul, to keep that soul pure, to lift those who bend down, and to give them hope, for they contemplate the Eternal Prototype of Beauty.

Festal Icons

The Incarnation as such was revealed in the icon of Christ and of His Mother; its great mysteries were told in the twelve Great Feasts, beginning with the Annunciation and ending with Dormition. Their iconography, based on the doctrine of the Church and shaped through Church's Festal Cycle and the Liturgy, was fixed by the tenth century. The mysteries of the Incarnation were re-enacted in the Divine Liturgy of the Church, to which icon ultimately belongs. All icons are a reflection of Divine Liturgy and belong to Church.

Freedom Within Living Tradition

The themes and elements icons are composed of, being part of the spiritual realm, are subjected to the spiritual rather than physical laws. Iconographers could show the Mother of God with three hands, a martyr holding his own head in his hands or simply depicted next to him, Adam's skull placed at the feet of the Cross, the world personified as an old king, St. John the Baptist acquiring wings like an angel... Everything on icons acquires wings, becomes heavenly. The weight and shadows of matter disappear. Thin gold lines like rays of Divine Light enter the represented figures, all that belongs to the earthly realm, and dematerializes it.

The icon painter moves and works in a celestial holy space which has nothing to do with the concept of dimension or volume seen by the physical eye. Everything is represented in a way that reveals the joyful beauty of new creation, the world returning to its original glory (Rom. 8:21). And while the represented themes may seem to be static or immobile, this apparent immobility declares that everything within lives. This is the 'immovable motion' of the mystics, the 'well of the living water'. The themes and the way they are represented reveal 'the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible' (I. Peter 3:4).

It is said that he who contemplates the icons will hear the cherubic hymn within, chanted on Holy Saturday: "Let all mortal flesh be silent; let us stand in fear and trembling, having no earthly thought".