www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Icons & Iconography Iconography Books?

Greetings all. I think my migration east might finally be complete. I'm in love with the Byzantine liturgy, especially how it helps me truly elevate my heart to God. I'm also becoming fascinated with icons, but I know next to nothing about the art form.

Can anyone recommend some good books that provide an overview of iconography? I'm interested in everything. History? How are proper ones are made? What determines a proper icon from a cheap knock off? How do I read an icon? What am I looking for?

Thanks very much for your recommendations.

You might begin by looking over the thread here "Evolution of Russian Iconography." There is quite a bit on all your questions in there. After that, please do feel free to post any questions. Someone will be happy to jump in and answer.

Thanks for pointing me in that direction.

Lessons on the Τheology of Οrthodox Ιcons
1. Principles of Iconography [floga.gr], the making of a holy icon, and analysis of the icon of the All Holy Mother of Jesus.
2. The Icon of the Nativity [floga.gr] of our Lord Jesus Christ.
3. The Icon of the Annunciation [floga.gr] of the Most Holy Theotokos.

That's all at the moment.

Very, very helpful to anyone curious about iconography!
Thank you Christina, and welcome to the forum. It is good to have someone from Greece here!

Με αγαπη εν Χριστω--
Να 'σε καλα!
Α.

"The first basic principle of iconography, an essential basic principle, is that the icon ‒ any icon ‒ depicts events in two dimensions, never in three dimensions; in two dimensions only. During the early years of the Church there were some sculptures and bas-reliefs that were gradually abandoned and eventually abolished. This is a manifestation of theology. The Roman Catholic “Church”, on the other hand, continued to practise sculpture, as you know. In our Church sculpture was completely abandoned for reasons that are deeply theological and very substantial, because they refer to the liturgical experience of the faithful who stand in front of the icon. As you can see, we only have two dimensions in iconography; we have height and width, we do not have depth and perspective."

This is false on a number of levels. First, there does continue to be sculpture used in the Orthodox Church. It is rare but it exists and continues to be made. Second, one looks in vain for any theological reason for the rarity of sculptures in the East- it seems to be primarily a cultural development. The "theology" has been invented post-facto to hold it up as yet another thing which makes us supposedly superior to the West. There are some genuine disagreements between Orthodoxy and the Catholic Church. They are difficult enough to resolve, and it is tiresome to encounter this impulse to concoct new ones. Unfortunately boorish parochialism and chauvinism dressed up as theology is a popular pastime in some Orthodox circles and it seems to come out especially when art is discussed.

For anyone interested, here is an interesting and informed article on statues in the Orthodox Church: http://www.orthodoxartsjournal.org/can-statuary-act-as-icon/

Greetings from Athens!
Thanks for you welcome me! I am glad the references seemed interesting to you.

SwanOfEndlessTales--
Behold, here we have the Interpretation from The Rudder on the Act 7 of the Seventh Ecumenical Council.

An idol is one thing, a statue is another thing, and an icon (or picture) is a different thing. For an idol differs from an icon in that the icon is a likeness of a true thing and its original, whereas the idol is an image of a false and inexistent thing, and is not the likeness of an original, according to Origen and Theodoret — just as were the idols of the false and inexistent gods of the Greeks. We call those images which embody the whole figure statues and carved or sculptured figures in general. As for this kind of images, namely, the statues, the catholic (Orthodox) Church not only does not adore them, but she does not even manufacture them, for many reasons: 1) because in its present definition this Council says for images to be produced with paints (or colours), with mosaic, or tessellated work, and with any other suitable material (which means with gold and silver and other metals, as Theodosius the bishop of Amorion says in Act 4 of the same Council) upon the sacred utensils, and robes, including sheets and cloths; upon walls and boards, and houses and streets. It did not mention a word about construction of a statue. Rather it may be said that this definition of this Council is antagonistic to statues; 2) because neither the letters written by patriarchs in their correspondence with one another, and to emperors, nor the letters of Pope Gregory to Germanus and of Pope Adrian to the present Council, nor the speeches and orations which the bishops and monks made in connection with all the eight Acts of the present Council said anything at all about statues or sculptured figures. But also the councils held by the iconomachs, and especially that held in Blachernae in the reign of Copronymus, in writing against the holy icons, mention oil paintings and portraits, but never statues or sculptured figures, which, if they existed, could not have been passed over in silence by the iconomachs, but, on the contrary, they would have been written against with a view to imputing greater blame to the Orthodox; 3) because although the woman with an issue of blood made a bronze statue of Christ in memory of and by way of giving thanks for the miracle and the benefaction which it had conferred upon her; and she set it up in the Panead, at the feet of which there sprang up a plant, or herb, which cured various ailments; and, as some say, that statue was smashed to pieces by the Emperor Maximinus, before Constantine the Great, and the bronze was seized by him; or else Julian the Apostate seized it, and put in its place the statue of Jupiter, as an anonymous writer says. Though, I say, the woman who had an issue of blood did make this statue (which the Christians took into the Church and honoured; and people went to see it out of a yearning for the original of it, as Philostorgus the Arian historically records), yet, as a matter of fact, that work of the woman who had an issue of blood was a concession from God, who, for goodness’ sake accepted it, making allowances for the imperfect knowledge of the woman who set it up; and because that was an embodiment and mark not of the grace of the Gospel, but of the old Law, as Pope Gregory II says in writing to St. Germanus (for the old Law had the two Cherubim, which were gold statues and sculptured figures containing all the body of the angelic powers, according to ch. 38 of Exodus, which Cherubim, according to an unknown expositor, had the face of a calf, and adored the Ark of the Covenant (here called the Ark of the Testimony, and by this adoration separated the Israelites from the idolatry of the Egyptians, who used to adore the calf. For the Jews learned from this that if a calf adored the Ark, it followed that the Egyptians were wrong in adoring it as a god). Not only the old Law, but also the custom of the Greeks fostered the erection of statues and sculptured figures, as St. Germanus writes in a letter to Thomas of Claudiopolis which is to be found in Act 4 of the present Council, and which says: “It being obvious that the Saviour levelled His own grace to condescension with the faith of the woman, and showed what has been made evident to us above, namely, that it is not that what is performed is in general the object, but that it is the aim of the one performing it that is being reduced to experience...." And again: “We do not say this, so that we may find an excuse for exercising the art of making bronze pillars, but merely in order to make it plain that the Lord did not discard the national custom at this point, but, instead, availed Himself of it to exhibit therein for a considerable length of time the wonder-working and miracle-working efficiency of His own benevolence; on which account it is not devout to disparage the custom of a somewhat more pious nature which has prevailed among us.” You see here three things as plainly as day, to wit: 1) that the erection of the statue of Christ was moral, and that the Lord accepted it as a matter of compromise with the times; 2) that statues ought not to be manufactured; and 3) that it is more pious and more decent for the venerable images to be depicted, not by means of statues, but by means of colours in paintings. For the same saint said above by way of anticipation that in historically recording the facts concerning the statues, he historically recounts the fact that the icons of the Apostles Peter and Paul, painted in colours, were still extant... Canon LXXXII of the 6th, moreover, says that we ought to prefer the grace of the Gospel to the legal form, and ought to set up the human character, or figure, of Christ in icons instead of the olden lamb even in oil paintings. So that from all that has been said it is proved that the Westerners are acting contrary to the definition of this holy and Ecumenical Seventh Council, and contrary to the tradition of the Church in making statues and sculptured figures and plaster of paris replicas, and setting them up in their churches. We said hereinabove those representations which embody the whole of that which they represent are called statues and sculptured work and plaster of paris figures in general, whereas those representations which do not embody the whole of the person or other object which they are intended to represent, but at most merely exhibit them in relief, projecting, that is to say, here and there above the level and surface of the background, are not called statues or sculptured work or plaster of paris figures or any such name, but, instead, they are called holy icons (or, if they are not holy, simply pictures). Such are those which are to be found engraved or stamped or otherwise delineated upon the sacred vessels, on divine Gospels, and other holy books, on precious crosses, of silver and gold, according to Dositheus (p. 656 of the Dodecabiblus); to the same class are assigned also images cast in wax and more or less in relief, that is to say, projecting at various points above and receding at other points below the plane surface of the image, concerning which divine Chrysostom (in his Discourse wherein he argues that one and the same Lawgiver is the author of both the Old and the New Testament; and in Discourse 307 on the vesture of priests, the origin of which is to be found in the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ) says the following: “I myself have loved the images cast in wax as a matter of piety. For I beheld an angel in an image driving back hordes of barbarians. I saw barbarian troops being trodden underfoot, and the words of David coming true, wherein he says: ‘Lord, in thy city Thou wilt do their image havoc’ (p. 852 of the second volume of the Conciliar Records, in Act 6 of the 7th C.; and p. 647 of the sixth vol. of Chrysostom). Oecumenius, too, accepts and approves this kind of image which is cast in wax in the manner above described (in his commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews). Hence, in writing to Symeon the bishop of Bostra, Anastasius the Patriarch of Antioch says: “though, as a matter of fact, an image is nothing else than a piece of wood and colours mixed and mingled with wax” (p. 845 of the second volume of the Conciliar Records). In the same class with these images are placed also the images which are carved in wooden crosses (crucifixes) and medallions. They, too, likewise are wrought in relief and project above the plane of the level surface, and do not compromise the whole body of the person or thing represented. The reason and cause why statues are not adored or venerated (aside from the legal observation and custom noted hereinabove) seem to me to be the fact that when they are handled and it is noticed that the whole body and all the members of the person or thing represented are contained in them and that they not only reveal the whole surface of it in three dimensions, but can even be felt in space, instead of merely appearing as such to the eye alone, they no longer appear to be, nor have they any longer any right to be called, icons or pictures, but, on the contrary, they are sheer replications of the originals. Some persons, though, assert or opine that the reason why the Church rejected or did away with statues was in order to avoid entirely any likeness to idols. For the idols were statues of massive sculpture, capable of being felt on all sides with the hand and fingers.

Hi Christina-

I am well aware of this interpretation from the Rudder. In fact it is discussed in the link I gave above. St. Nicodemus wrote his commentary in the 18th century. He is trying to explain a tradition and is giving his own reasonings in the absence of any statement on the matter from the sources. So again, we are looking at a post-facto explanation of why the Eastern Church does not often employ statues. I say "often" because there are some clear though admittedly rare examples of statues being used in the Orthodox Church to this day.

[Linked Image]

[Linked Image]