Icons
Icons
(sing. εἰκών, “image”). In its broadest sense an icon is any representation of a sacred personage, produced in many media and sizes, monumental as well as portable; in its narrowest sense icon most often refers to a painted wooden devotional panel “Painted Icons,” below.
Icon Veneration and the Theory of Images.
The term eikon was ambiguous, applied even to ancient statues, while other terms of pagan vocabulary, such as stele or agalma, could be used for images of Christ. On the other hand, the Byz. tried to contrast eikon with eidolon (idol), which was an embodiment of pagan cult; sometimes, however, the difference between them disappeared as in the story about a heathen ektypoma that turned out to be an image of the Archangel Michael (Malal. 78f).
Christianity inherited a hostile attitude toward images from the Old Testament prohibition of Exodus 20:4 (“Thou shalt not make … any graven image”) and from the era of persecutions, when Christians were forced to sacrifice in front of imperial images. Many early church fathers (e.g., Eusebios of Caesarea, Epiphanios of Cyprus) disapproved of icons, esp. those of Christ, since he should be worshiped as an “image (eikon) of the invisible God.” Nevertheless, Christians decorated their Catacombs and eventually their churches with images that were considered to be holy. Church fathers such as Basil the Great defended the veneration of images as offered not to the picture but to the prototype (PG 32:149C).
The dispute became acute in the 8th and 9th C. during the controversy over Iconoclasm. The Iconoclasts argued that portrayal of Christ leads either to Nestorian separation of humanity from divinity or Monophysite confusion of humanity and divinity; they considered the eucharistic elements as the only proper “icon” of Christ. Iconophiles, the defenders of icon veneration (primarily John of Damascus, Theodore of Stoudios, Patr. Nikephoros I), developed Basil's idea and elaborated the concept of three levels of image: Christ as the natural image of the Father; man as the divine image by adoption and imitation; and the icon as an artistic image of Christ or the saints. Consequently, they also developed a terminology to differentiate the veneration of icons: they distinguished the relative veneration (timetike/schetike proskynesis) of the icon and saints from the genuine worship (latreia) of the object depicted and stressed that the purpose of veneration was to arouse devotion. Attacking the Iconoclasts, they connected the latter's anti-iconic attitude with Manichaean (Paulician) and Jewish tenets. John of Damascus emphasized the didactic role of icons, esp. for the illiterate, whereas the Letter of the Three Patriarchs and saints' vitae describe the wondrous power of icons, which could heal the sick and bring retribution on assailants.
The principles of icon veneration were summarized at the Second Council of Nicaea (787), which, however, laid greater emphasis on the tradition of miracle-working icons (such as the Mandylion and other Acheiropoieta, likenesses “not made by human hand”) than on theological subtleties. Doubts about icon veneration remained alive even after the defeat of Iconoclasm (J. Gouillard, AnnEPHE, 5e section, 86 [1977/8] 29–50).
G.B. Ladner, The Concept of the Image in the Greek Fathers and the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy, DOP 7 (1953) 1–34.Find this resource:
E. Kitzinger, The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm, DOP 8 (1954) 83–150.Find this resource:
Th. Nikolaou, Die Ikonenverehrung als Beispiel ostkirchlicher Theologie und Frömmigkeit nach Johannes von Damaskos, OstkSt 25 (1976) 138–65.Find this resource:
S. Gero, Cyril of Alexandria, Image Worship, and the Vita of Rabban Hormizd, OrChr 62 (1978) 77–97.Find this resource:
L. Barnard, The Theology of Images, in Iconoclasm 7–13.Find this resource:
M. Loos, Einzige strittige Fragen der ikonoklastischen Ideologie, BBA 51 (1983) 131–51.Find this resource:
P. Henry, The Formulators of Icon Doctrine, in Schools of Thought in the Christian Tradition, ed. P. Henry (Philadelphia 1984) 75–89.Find this resource:
Painted Icons.
The painted wooden panel is the most copiously preserved and longest-lived genre of that very distinctive form of Byz. art, the portable devotional icon. Its history can be studied best from the panels at the monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, the only comprehensive collection of Byz. examples that survives. The earliest preserved panel-painted icons—some 27, all at Sinai—belong to the 6th–7th C. (Weitzmann, Sinai Icons, nos. B.1–B.31). All are on wood and are from 14 to 92 cm high. They use antique media, either encaustic (pigment suspended in wax) or tempera (pigment suspended in egg yolk, the medium found in most post-Iconoclastic panels). Their forms—likewise antique—include single rectangular panels, diptychs (derived from writing tablets), and Triptychs (recalling Late Antique devotional triptychs with images of the gods); no round examples survive, but they are depicted in other media and so may have existed. Their portrait compositions echo Late Antique commemorative Portraits and imperial lavrata. Thematically varied, with New Testament theophanies, Old Testament scenes promising salvation, and full- and half-length portraits of Christ, the Virgin Mary, prophets, and major saints, they reflect not so much liturgical formulas as private devotions. Chronologically, these panels coincide with extensive evidence in other media and in saints' vitae of images mediating the holy. Thus they seem to reflect a significant stage in the development of the icon, as it moved from private use into more public visibility. The diverse subjects and formats of these earliest panels indicate that most came into the church as private Votive donations, and their use remained extraliturgical, focusing individual devotions.
Panels of the 8th and 9th C.—surviving only at Sinai (Weitzmann, Sinai Icons, nos. B.32–B.41)— are exceedingly scant and probably of provincial origin. Examples of the 10th and 11th C. are less rare. They reflect the centralized character of the Byz. world at this time, as art was linked firmly to liturgy and the liturgy itself was regularized. Thematically, art was thoroughly coordinated with liturgy by exhibiting established liturgical feasts: images were attached to particular feasts and their compositions standardized to represent both the event or person commemorated and the feast itself. This set repertoire of liturgically determined representations was adopted in all media, including panel painting, displacing the earlier heterogeneous devotional imagery. Functionally, the painted panel—though never adopted into the actual liturgical ceremony—was similarly coordinated with liturgical practice when the church Templon emerged as the focus for its public display. Normally stored on hooks in aisles or the sanctuary, panels were moved to the templon—or to a Proskynetarion in front of it—on the day of the feast they represented. Shifted in accord with shifting feasts, the panels remained portable, seldom exceeding the height of about one meter accommodated by the templon. In shape, however, they adapted to the rectangular intercolumniations of the templon, and only private panels retained the varied antique forms.
Panels of the mid-11th through 12th C. are characterized more by innovation and proliferation than by standardization. The liturgy, now thoroughly regularized, was enriched emotionally by the incorporation of evocative ceremonies, esp. those of Holy Week. This opened the way for artistic invention within liturgical boundaries, generating new, emotionally charged images based on hymns and prayers: the Man of Sorrows, variants of the Virgin Eleousa, Symeon Glykophilon (see Hypapante), the major bilateral icons (see below). These new themes were suited to, and probably originated as, devotional panels. They coincided with an expanded use of panel-painted icons in both public and private devotion. Richer patterns for the disposition of panels in church and templon emerged, generating new and distinctively Byz. shapes: the long, narrow templon beam displaying a Great Deesis or Great Feasts cycle; the panels hung in the templon's intercolumniations, usually showing Christ, Mary, John the Baptist, or the church's patron saint; the holy (or “royal”) doors in the templon adorned with the Annunciation; the Crucifixion mounted above the templon; the calendar icons, whose registers display the feast images for entire months; and the hagiographical or “vita” icons, showing a saint surrounded by scenes from his or her life. While such images may often have been made of precious materials in the churches of Constantinople, panel painting was generally adopted, proving preferable in scale, weight, adaptability, and affordability. Many more panel paintings survive from the 12th C. than from any earlier century. Sinai itself was fully furbished with panel-painted icons then, and panel painting began to take on a local cast in the byzantinizing cultures of Russia and Italy.
The climactic proliferation of panel painting came in Palaiologan art. The 14th is the first century in which panel paintings dominate works in other media both numerically and artistically. More panels are preserved than icons in other media; for the first time they survive from all parts of the Orthodox world, reflecting numerous local traditions. Their imagery expands, embracing complex allegories and arcane New Testament and hagiographical events. Other media imitate them: MS illumination contracts to frontispieces resembling icons; monumental painting exhibits grids of iconlike rectangular pictures; in the realm of precious materials, the miniature mosaic (see “Mosaic Icons” below), which attempts to imitate the fluid modeling of panel painting, displaces the more abstract media like enamel. The templon develops into the iconostasis, the opaque screen of fixed icons, tier upon tier.
Little is known about icon painters. Though some were monks, others were clearly laymen, and many practiced in a variety of media (see Artists).
Belting, Bild und Kult 11–330.Find this resource:
M. Chatzidakis, L'icône byzantine, Saggi e memorie di storia dell'arte 2 (1959) 9–40.Find this resource:
W. Felicetti-Liebenfels, Geschichte der byzantinischen Ikonenmalerei (Olten-Lausanne 1956).Find this resource:
Soteriou, Eikones.Find this resource:
K. Weitzmann, Icon Programs of the 12th and 13th Centuries at Sinai, DChAE4 12 (1984) 63–116.Find this resource:
K. Weitzmann et al., The Icon (New York 1982).Find this resource:
Bilateral Icons.
The term bilateral is usually reserved for panel-painted icons of fair size, displaying thematically related compositions on both faces. Some 37 Byz. examples survive; the earliest is of the 11th C. The obverse generally shows the Pantokrator, the Virgin Mary, or a saint and the reverse a Christological or Marian feast, or scenes from the life of the saint. Most widespread is the pairing of the Virgin Hodegetria and Crucifixion. In fact, the Hodegetria icon in Constantinople seems to have originated the whole genre: being the object of special veneration on Good Friday, the Virgin icon was at some unknown point furnished with an image of the Crucifixion on its reverse. From this model, apparently, sprang the idea of pairing a church's patron saint with a Great Feast and esp. the idea of pairing the Virgin prescient of her infant's death with an image of that death itself. The actual use of bilateral icons remains unclear; hung ordinarily on the templon screen, they were surely displayed on special occasions in processions or on stands (Proskynetaria), where their conjunction of images could be appreciated. Though some icons, such as the great palladia—the Hodegetria and the Virgin of Vladimir—may have become bilateral as cult practices developed around them, other icons were bilateral from the start.
Pallas, Passion und Bestattung 89–97, 308–32.Find this resource:
Metal Icons.
Vulnerable because their material could be reused, few icons in precious metals survive today. They were numerous in the Byz. era, however, in both public and private contexts. In private use, gold, silver, bronze, cloisonné enamel, and Cameos were formed into icons for personal adornment on amulets, pendants, belts, and rings. Byz. wills refer to devotional icons of silver and copper. Silver examples do not survive, though several small bronze panels seem to copy more costly silver models, just as the gilded bronze triptych in London reflects models in ivory (K. Weitzmann, The Icon: Holy Images, Sixth to Fourteenth Century [New York 1978], fig.E). In the public realm, cloisonné icons adorned not only imperial and ecclesiastical vestments and vessels, but also church furniture. The Pala d'Oro in S. Marco in Venice preserves Byz. enamels both from the church's 12th-C. antependium (altar front) and from the templon beam of the Pantokrator Monastery in Constantinople. These represent Christ, apostles, angels, and Great Feasts. Individual metal icons most often show single figures: Christ, the Virgin Mary, an archangel or a major saint (military saints, Nicholas of Myra). The most spectacular surviving examples are the two cloisonné and relief panels of St. Michael in Venice (Treasury S. Marco, nos. 12, 19); the paired cloisonné plaques there (nos. 9, 14), now used as bookcovers, may originally have been used as devotional panels in Byz.
A. Bank, Prikladnoe iskusstvo Vizantii (IX–XII vv.) (Moscow 1978) 64–71.Find this resource:
Eadem, Byzantine Art in the Collections of the USSR (Leningrad-Moscow 1966), pls. 159–63, 180–85.Find this resource:
Mosaic Icons.
Some 48 Byz. mosaic icons survive from the 11th through 14th C. Artistic hybrids of outstanding luxury, they unite the portability of panel paintings with the mosaic technique of mural art and the precious materials of metalwork. Wax or resin on wood serves as a setting bed for jewellike tesserae of solid gold and silver, semiprecious stones, ivory, and enamel flux. One group, which includes the earliest examples, contains relatively large panels (23–34 × 62–92 cm) that reproduce greatly venerated single-figure prototypes, esp. of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and reflect the setting techniques of mural mosaic. Many of these originated on templon beams and were not initially portable. By the 12th C., the technique of this group came to be dominated by the diminutive, densely set tesserae and opulent colors developed for a second group. This second group, preeminently of 14th-C. examples, comprises tiny mosaics of 6–10 by 18–26 cm. Showing single saints or Great Feasts and often set like gems in ornate silver frames, these tiny examples were surely made for private devotion, most probably in Constantinople. Of consummate craftsmanship, they use tesserae of 1 sq. mm, set so densely that they appear seamless and breathtakingly illusionistic. Sometimes their media are mixed, with molded haloes of gilded gesso around mosaic figures or mosaic highlights in painted fields (Florence diptych).
I. Furlan, Le icone bizantine a mosaico (Milan 1979).Find this resource:
O. Demus, Two Palaeologan Mosaic Icons in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, DOP 14 (1960) 87–119.Find this resource:
A.-A. Krickelberg-Pütz, Die Mosaikikone des Hl. Nikolaus in Aachen-Burtschied, Aachener Kunstblätter 50 (1982) 56–141.Find this resource: