If I had been writing about sacred art 100 years ago for a Catholic readership, I would have ignored entirely any reference to traditional Byzantine art. Until the middle of the last century, the Roman Catholic world was largely unaware of or, at the very least, uninterested in Byzantine iconography. Anyone who knew about this style was as likely as not a historian specialising in Byzantine studies, who considered it a throwback to a medieval past, anomalously preserved in Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic liturgies.
In recent decades, however, there has been a surge of scholarly and popular interest in the history and development of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox iconography. This renewed fascination crosses religious boundaries, with Roman Catholics and Protestants also incorporating these sacred images into their homes and places of worship. To fully appreciate this change, we must first establish a clear understanding of what exactly the term “icon” means.
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| The Lancaster Martyrs, by contemporary Catholic iconographer, Martin Earle |
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If you read a contemporary book on iconography or attend an icon painting workshop, you will likely encounter what is generally referred to today as a “theology of icons”, and will often get the impression that this explanation of iconography, along with the iconographic style itself, has not changed since it was first developed in the 5th century. But this is not so.
The theological justification for the stylistic elements of the iconographic tradition - the “theology of icons” - was developed relatively recently by Russian Orthodox intellectuals who were worried about the Westernisation of the traditional art being produced in Orthodox churches, and were seeking to re-establish a purer style of sacred art that corresponded to the ancient Russian tradition. The leading figure in this Russian “renaissance” was the Orthodox priest and polymath Pavel Florensky (1882–1937). Despite being an Orthodox Christian priest, Florensky never left Russia (and Stalin eventually executed him in 1937).
However, a prominent group of Russian theologians and painters, who were influential within the intellectual milieu of Orthodox Christian theology, left after the Bolshevik Revolution and ultimately settled in France. I am thinking here of the writers Leonid Ouspensky (who also painted icons), Vladimir Lossky, and Paul Evdokimov, as well as Gregory Kroug, the icon painter. Florensky’s writings were circulated amongst this group.
The goal of these expatriates was to re-establish traditional art forms of the Orthodox Church by creating a set of principles to guide contemporary artists. The result of this was that they took Florensky’s ideas and further developed them, leading to the emergence of a new theology of icons. This was a great achievement. The success of their work is evident in the surging number of people painting icons, which continues to this day, and has influenced other Orthodox churches, such as the Greek Orthodox Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church, and the Byzantine Catholic churches. The best of these contemporary iconographers paint as well as any of the past masters. It is the beauty of these contemporary icons that stirred interest and made the iconographic style fashionable outside Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic circles today in the West.
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| The Harrowing of Hell (Anastasis), by Gregory Kroug |
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| Painted by Ouspensky |
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| Painted by Kroug |
While the Russo-Byzantine style, as seen in Russian and Greek Orthodox churches, is perhaps the most well-known form of iconography, it is not the only variant. The Coptic, Armenian, and other Eastern Christian churches have all developed distinctive iconographic traditions, and the general picture is one of a renewal and flourishing of these associated iconographic traditions too.
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| By Isaac Fanous, Egyptian, the father of neo-Coptic iconography, who studied under Ouspensky in the 1960s. |
The incredible beauty of these new icons caught the attention of Roman Catholics (and Protestants). Western churches were experiencing a crisis of beauty and seemed unable to produce sacred art that wasn’t either ugly modernist or cheesy kitsch. Consequently, there was a hunger for authentic liturgical art. French Catholics, in particular, became aware of the hub of this iconographic renewal first, which was centred in Paris, France. Soon, Catholics and Protestants began to create icons as well.
But this renewed enthusiasm for icons in the West has led to certain misconceptions, and iconography is often enshrouded in an artificial mystique.
As Catholics, while acknowledging the validity of iconography and the theories that underpin its resurgence as a style, we should be cautious not to adopt all that these Russian theorists wrote. They were strongly prejudiced against Western naturalistic styles of art and baked this into their ideas. Catholics should not feel bound to accept, for example, the assertion that the iconographic style is the only valid form of liturgical art. As Benedict XVI wrote in his book
The Spirit of the Liturgy, and as I explain in my book
The Way of Beauty, the Gothic and Baroque styles, which are certainly not iconographic in form, can also be considered authentically liturgical forms. What the story of the successful reestablishment of the iconographic tradition in the East reveals is that the West can do something similar with its own artistic traditions. Following their method, we should choose a canon of great images and analyse them in such a way that we develop a set of defining principles that can guide artists today.
Furthermore, the notion that iconographers “write” rather than “paint” their works is a contemporary idiom with no basis in tradition. Most iconographers, including those within the Orthodox tradition, simply refer to their craft as painting without any sense of diminishing its spiritual significance. As my teacher (who is Orthodox) put it to me: “When I dip a paintbrush into paint and apply it to the surface, it is called a painting. It doesn’t demean my art to describe it as such.” Also, painting is not prayer, and prayer is not painting. They are two different activities... do I really need to explain that one?
Nevertheless, this resurgence of interest in icons has been an overwhelmingly positive development, challenging the historical marginalisation of Eastern Christian art and enriching Western art.
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| Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, by contemporary Catholic iconographer Martin Earle. |
