Byzantine Icons

Comparative Civilizations 12

Kevin J. Benoy

Icons

Religious works are referred to as icons.

This is the Greek word for image.

Byzantine Icons

Late classical art moved toward the symbolic and away from the natural.This trend continued into the Byzantine Period.

                                                         

                           

Icons

Such images varied in size and could be produced in mosaic, ivory, enamel, gold, or paint on wood.Believers sought to connect with the sacred through venerating these images.

Icons

From time to time, religious and political authorities became uncomfortable with the practice of venerating icons as it seemed to go against the Biblical demand that people not worship “graven images.” Depiction of iconoclast

destroying a religious icon

Icons

During the Byzantine period, sculpture in the round largely disappeared.

Low relief sculpture and surface detailing of architecture remained.

Icons

In painting, it was important to produce figures who were beautiful or notable – but not realistic.

The lack of solidity was intended to express spiritualism.

Icons

Paintings are linear, not painterly.

Outlines are clear and there is little blending of colour to give three dimensionality.Compare the

icon with Rembrandt’s

painterly image of

Christ

Icons

There were two basic styles of presenting human figures.The first expressed power and importance.

These images were frontal, full length, and serious.The eye focuses on faces and hands – with the hands gesturing or holding important objects. This is a development from Roman portrait paintings and sculptural busts.

Icons In the second style, feelings are expressed.

The subject is in action and shows distress, adoration, sympathy or another emotional state.Hands are still important – generally gesturing.Eyes and faces have a classical restraint to them and faces do not display extreme emotion.Drapery indicates emotion. Simple vertical folds or no folds show the work to be serious. Fluttering drapery indicates emotion.

Icons

Three dimensionality achieved through light and shadow does not entirely disappear, but placement of figures on plain gold, silver, or other flat backgrounds tends to disconnect figures from the real world of time and space.

Icons

Architectural details are decorative and bear little relationship to the figures who often appear absurdly large in comparison.

Icons

The size of figures often relates to their importance or rank.Higher figures, or those closest to the sanctuary, are most important.Christ is always larger than other people.He is usually portrayed in the central dome of churches.

Icons

Bright, rich colours are used so that images can be read from a distance.

Emperors and empresses wear purple robes and red shoes.

Other ranks wear other colours.

Icons

Producing art was an honourable profession, yet we know the names of few artists before the 13th century.

Icon by the Russian master

Rublev

Rublev

The Transfiguration

In the Cathedral of the Annunciation,Moscow

Kremlin

Theophanes, The Greek

Virgin of the Don, by Theophanes, the Greek, in Moscow’s Cathedral of the Annunciation.

Icons

Artists learned their craft within their family, though we know that some artists were apprenticed to masters.

Painters also created mosaic works – as in Roman times.

IconsThe iconic tradition largely ended in Western Europe with the onset of the Renaissance.

It continues in Eastern Orthodox churches to the present day.