Byzantine Icons

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Byzantine Icons
Comparative Civilizations 12
Kevin J. Benoy
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Icons

• Religious works are referred to as icons.
• This is the Greek word for image.

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Byzantine Icons

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

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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.

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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.

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Icons

• During the Byzantine period, sculpture in the
  round largely disappeared.
• Low relief sculpture and surface detailing of
  architecture remained.

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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.

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Icons

• Paintings are linear, not painterly.
• Outlines are clear and there is little blending
  of colour to give three dimensionality.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Icons

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

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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.

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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.

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Icons

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

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Rublev
The Transfiguration In the Cathedral of the
Annunciation,Moscow Kremlin
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Theophanes, The Greek

• Virgin of the Don, by Theophanes, the Greek, in
  Moscows Cathedral of the Annunciation.

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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.

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Icons

• The iconic tradition largely ended in Western
  Europe with the onset of the Renaissance.
• It continues in Eastern Orthodox churches to the
  present day.