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Introduction

Among graphic arts, the icon took first place in Russian life. Apart from the early Novgorod wall-painting, we may call the icon the chief expression of religious thought and popular feeling as early as the fourteenth century. Later, when wall-painting became subordinate to icon-painting, the icon became the one and only symbol of faith. In view of its special significance and its derivation from the Byzantine model, the Russian icon takes its place as the continuation of a high artistic tradition and in its development offers an unparalleled example of artistic craftsmanship. In its decorative qualities, the uniqueness of its composition, the severity of its types, the ideal character and spiritual depth of the religious thought it conveyed, the icon is to be compared with the early period of religious art in Western Europe. Besides this, the historian of art must bear in mind that the easel-picture arose over time from the icon. They must make every effort to comprehend the artform of the Russian icon in order to understand the historical traditions lying behind easel painting and influencing it to this day. Finally, from the early eighteenth century to the present day, the Russian icon has long existed as a handicraft or kustár’ product.[1]

As such, icons deserve the attention of art historians, for artistic handicrafts present difficult and complicated problems to historical interpretation which, for such reasons, have long been avoided. The time has come for Russian archaeology to study Russian icon-painting and trace through this particular phenomenon’s five centuries of history. Three centuries of neglect beginning with Peter the Great have sundered the Russian people from the last flourishing period of this artform and destroyed a greater number of icons than all the town fires and devastations in the Russian countryside combined.

Inventories tell us just how rich in icons the Russian cathedrals, monasteries, and private houses once were and also demonstrate the Muscovites’ reverence before ancient and hallowed icons. With great precision, these documents allow us to follow the disappearance of icons from Russian churches since the eighteenth century. Even as late as the early nineteenth century the Moscow churches were full of ancient sacred objects. The walls of the monasteries were hung with ‘Votive’ and ‘Festival’ icons and the outer chapels with panels of the saints of the calendar (Menaea). As people ceased to care for them, forgot about them and no longer looked after them (and they require constant repair), they were put into storage — and that meant destruction for many of the best icons. It was in the face of this destruction that there appeared all sorts of imitation work on tinfoil (fólezhnoe), podubórnoe,[2] paper, and other materials of the cheapest sort.

Icon-painting hid itself in the depths of the country: at Suzdal’ and in the Súzdal’ district there arose whole settlements of icon-painters, Mstëra, Palëkh, and Khóluy, but of these Palëkh and Khóluy had already adopted the ‘Frankish’ style[3] and ‘naturalistic’ painting (zhívopis’). Little Russia had rude ‘naturalistic’ icons as early as the seventeenth century: the success of Borovikóvski’s talent attracted general attention.

2. Christ in Glory, Giving His Blessing, 4th century.

Decoration of an opus sectile, coming from an

edifice near Port Marina. Museo Ostiense, Ostia.

The cathedrals[4] and churches of the South first began to be decorated by ordinary painters. Later, the region was followed by Muscovy in deserting the old fashion. The only people left to revere it were the Old Believers. They adopted as their favourite style that called after the Stróganovs and thus ensured its predominance in the workshops of Moscow and Súzdal’.

The excessive admiration for everything Western which was universal among educated Russians during the eighteenth century suffered a reaction at the time of the war against Napoleon. National feeling was raised to fever pitch, which was sustained by the romantic tendency of the new Russian litterature. The educated classes were drawn into a movement, called on its political side Slavophilism, for restoring and preserving the popular traditions. Educated men in the highest social positions, such as Rumyántsev, Olénin, and Evgéni Bolkhovítinov, Metropolitan of Kiev, began to collect the literary memorials of ancient Russia, chronicles and charters, and encouraged the making of archaeological surveys of ancient monasteries and churches. The icons that attracted most attention, and this chiefly from the historical side, were those famous for working miracles.

In the eighteen twenties and thirties, the number of antiquaries and collectors increased and the foundations of historical museums of Russian antiquities were laid. A great collector of manuscripts and icons was the historian m. P. Pogódin. The documentary side of Russian historical scholarship was encouraged by the Moscow Historical and Antiquarian Society which was founded in 1806. It was upon this documentation that all I. m. Snegirëv’s work on the history of the churches and monasteries of Moscow was based.[5] On the other hand, the chief stimulus to the archaeology of objects was given by the inauguration in St. Petersburg of the Russian Archaeological Society in 1846.[6]

It was this atmosphere which trained for their heroic searches after Russian and Christian antiquities the famous Bishop Porfíri Uspénski, who discovered and collected the most ancient known icons from the Greek East, V. A. Prókhorov, who increased the collection of Russian Antiquities in the Academy of Fine Arts, and I. P. Sákharov, who emarked upon a large-scale Enquiry into Russian Icon-painting but was only able to produce a few fragments. The famous I.E. Zabêlin in his The Manner of Life of the Russian Tsars and Tsaritsas made accessible the main written sources for the archeology of objects, and was the first to publish Materials for a History of Russian Icon-painting.[7]

In the eighteen sixties the chief authorities on Russian icon-painting were G. D. Filimónov and D. A. Rovínski, natives of Moscow and pupils of the Moscow and Suzdal’ icon-painters. Filimónov was cautious in his work and left no general study of icons, only a biography of Simon Ushakóv, the text of an interesting Pódlinnik[8], and an account of an excursion to the icon-painting villages. Rovínski attacked the matter more boldly and produced a short History of the Russian Schools of Icon-painting down to the end of the 17th century.[9]

Historical analysis is the natural result of cleaning the icons; this begun at the end of the nineteenth century and special attention has been paid to it. After much labour and minute care, the dark and smoke-begrimed icon reveals bright colours and harmonious shades. Now that they have been cleaned, the decorative beauty of the big icons in the State Russian Museum is so attractive that the neighbouring galleries of modern pictures, with their general effect of grey colouring, look pale and depressing. Formerly the walls of this museum and the great screen of the Uspénski (Assumption) Cathedral at Moscow had nothing to offer but what Bunin calls ‘icons, black planks, poor symbols of God’s might’. Now, out of the black planks, we have restored pictures that attract the eye with their patches of bright colour and the charm of their delicate half-tones.

3. Mosaic of Christ, 5th century.

Chapel of San Prisco, near Santa Maria Capua Vetere.

This show-side of the newly cleaned icons in the museums and private collections attracted the attention of the press, which was carried away by aesthetic enthusiasm and rated them too highly. Magazine writers disregarded the historical side of the matter and glorified the newly discovered ‘great, inspired and magnificent art’, ‘an enormous addition to the world’s stock of artistic treasures’; fancy divorced from criticism found in icon-painting; ‘a free idealism’ which was supposed ‘to know neither space nor time, living amid unknown mountains and plains, essentially cut off by a great gulf from history, literature, nature herself and life’. To counteract these extravagances there was imperative need for a critical estimate of select examples, a definite course of investigation, and a practical application of scientific method guided by comparison and historical classification.

An opportunity for this was afforded by the enlightened action of the See of Novgorod. In the diocesan museum and in the church of Ss. Peter and Paul[10] it was found possible to clean the most ancient Novgorod icons, and this gave a real basis for investigating the history of icon-painting in the Novgorod period. This investigation, joined with that of the Greek models, made it possible to confute the view that tradition was immovable.[11]

The Russian icon began, of course, by imitating the Greek model, but this model was not always accessible (e.g. in Novgorod) and began itself to change: the Greek or purely Byzantine style gave way to the Greco-Oriental, this to the Greco-Italian, and finally to the Neo-Greek style. So the Russian icon lived by tradition, mainly because it was satisfied with being a craft without pretending to creativeness, but it adopted one tradition after another following each new pattern. The fact is that the Greek icon, for all its changes, equally kept to tradition because it, likewise, was a mere handicraft.

But as a craft, the Russian icon brought forth real talents, and they made use either of their own personal creativeness or else adapted new examples and types. These talents at once found pupils, forming and developing schools of craftsmen who spread abroad their style and manner. The main reason why they were successful was because they did not violate tradition but aimed at an improved execution of an inherited model. The process of perfecting the form brought with it a national remodelling of the foreign original, and side by side with this, a new spiritual content expressing itself in the improved form and due to personal feeling. But any new contribution was typically Russian and so easily accepted. Accordingly, the processes of artistic creation in Russia were such that we can lay bare the actual mechanism by which it lived and changed. Artistic phenomena may have been simpler in Russia than abroad, but the area over which development went on was very wide, comprising the lands of Novgorod, Pskov, Tver’, Vólogda and all the north, besides Suzdal’ and Moscow: it was a civilizing work which spread over all Muscovite Russia, the most advanced part of the Eastern European plains. The development of the artistic form in drawing and colouring must not take all our attention to the neglect of content; both on the religious side, the choice and invention of the theme or subject and its composition, and also on the side touching material life, the store of types, their setting, buildings, landscapes, clothing and vestments, and everything which is meant by iconography. Thus, we shall see that though ancient Russia was divided from western Europe by the great gulf which looks insuperable to the eye of the political historian from the time of the Mongol invasion, we can observe in Russian icon-painting essentially the same movement as that which was going on in the West; but here its greater force and brilliancy led up to the general achievement of Europe in the Renaissance. In Russian icon-painting we can see, from the end of the fourteenth century, a change in direction turning the iconographic tradition towards feeling and expression. This break both enlivened the form and also changed the religious idea expressed by the icon; instead of the Byzantine dogma we have religious life, drawing man nearer to God. At the same time, the types change from Greek to Russian and the iconographic scheme is enriched with subsidiary groups and more elaborate settings: it wakes up, loses its deadness, and becomes alive and picturesque. We shall see later that the more perfect icon-paintings of the Novgorod and Moscow schools in the sixteenth century answer, in their complicated composition, theological subjects, and comparatively severe and correct drawing to the full Renaissance in Italy. The natural inference is that, besides the historical parallel between the two arts, we have to reckon with the direct influence of foreign, mostly Italian, examples and also of artists coming if not from Italy then from the Greek East, subject since the fifteenth century to the artistic influence of Italy.

4. Our Lady Hodegetria (Double-sided Icon), 12th century.

Byzantine Museum, Kastoria, Macedonia.

5. Christ Pantocrator, end of the 13th century.

Egg tempera on plaster on wood, 47.5 x 30 cm.

The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

6. Christ Pantocrator, 12th century. Mosaic.

Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.

7. The Virgin with Child or “Virgin glykophilousa”,
Cretan School, c. 1500. 332 x 332 cm.

Musée du Louvre, Paris.

My long-continued study of the iconography of the Virgin in Byzantium, in western Europe, and in Russia, led me to the discovery that many ancient, and even wonder-working icons of the Virgin, now cherished and revered in Russia, have their prototypes and patterns in Greco-Italian icons of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.[12] The characteristic style of these icons was already, in the fifteenth century, prominent in wall-painting and became the model for icon-painting first at Suzdal’, then Novgorod, and finally all over Russia; however, its influence was weaker in the Novgorod school, which early lost the Byzantine manner and refinement. This style even received the honourable name of ‘Greek’ as opposed to the ‘Frankish’ (Fryázhski) style, a mixture of late Greek and Western art. This streak of foreign influence, enlivening the decadence of the Byzantine scheme and meeting the spiritual demands of the nation, runs so clearly through the whole domain of Russian icon-painting that it is just the path which was wanted to lead Russia through its terra incognita. It gives us a definite historical landmark which enables us more or less to take our bearings and, best of all, to get away from that domination of the mere ipse dixit which marks both barbarism and superficial aesthetic criticism.[13]

Modern aestheticism in Russia, coming from dilettantes and journalists, hastened to declare the Russian icon to be ‘great art’, the discovery of which would astonish Europe and which would claim a place as a ‘new world-treasure’.[14] According to these commentators, the Russian icon may no doubt repeat the Byzantine composition but it saves its ‘creativeness’ by artistic reproduction of it: the icon has ‘style’, which, they maintain, is wanting in Italian art of the same date, so the latter sinks into a ‘provincial art’. According to them the role played by the Pódlinniki with models for icon-painting is very much exaggerated, the idea being that the brilliant period of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries had no such thing as perevódy, that is, as it were, stencils for tracing icons, nor yet foreign models. The style of the Russian icon is supposed to be without expression and without narrative; it is not tied to life and to its reality, it is a ‘pure art’. Its types are in themselves national and though the Russian figure of Christ is of a foreign type, still they hold that it contains a ‘Russian soul’. The Russian icon is made out to be ‘aristocratic’; its ‘idealism is immovable’ and ‘open to the contemplation of miracle’. Everything in an icon is ideal; even the buildings and hills offer an ‘imaginary world’, with types ‘imponderable’, ‘fined away in their idealism’. The worship of a sacred art devoted to icons always kept its hold on Russia, and pointed to the East not to the West. In this art, the line and the design are ruled by tradition: the colours, their selection and blending belong to the individual; according to their special prescriptions we distinguish the different schools. The bright colour of Russian icons and the striking beauty of the combinations of shades are, all in all, the strength of the Russian icon.

To show that this aesthetic theory is absolutely wanting in any scientific consistency or philosophical content there is no need to analyse it as a whole or in detail: it is sufficient to confront it with a statement founded upon history and an analysis of the facts.

8. The Virgin of Tolg, 13th century.

Egg tempera on cypress panel, 140 x 92 cm.

The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

9. Faiyum Portrait, 4th century.

Národní galerie v Praze, Prague.

Origins: the Orient and Greece

The history of the Russian icon must begin with its original source, its most ancient prototype. As we shall see, the Byzantine icon, the model which the Russians adopted with Christianity, has left very few surviving examples and so, having lost its own history, can scarcely furnish a basis for the history of the Russian icon. It is unlikely that ancient Kiev received its icons directly from Byzance itself, with which it often lost touch owing to the Nomad barrier. To Kiev things came mainly from Chersonesus Taurica: we find both at Chersonesus and at Kiev identical objects of the tenth to twelfth centuries, bronze crosses, coloured tiles, glazed pottery, and the like.[15]

Chersonesus, a great commercial city, supplied ancient Russia with all kinds of goods from Asia Minor, exported through Sinope and Trebizond. The Grecian East was the true home of the icon; it arose there in the fourth century and spread abroad in the fifth. Fathers of the Church, such as S. John Chrysostom or Gregory of Nysa, already knew of it as an adjunct of the Christian faith. The icon was nothing new; it was born among the ordinary panel portraits of martyrs and confessors which were executed by the encaustic or wax process and laid either upon the coffins and sarcophagi or else upon definite shrines in martyria or memoriae.[16] When such palpable honour, done to the martyrs memory, was rendered as a portrait, it gave the wooden panel the sacred significance of the honoured icon.[17]

This early stage of the icon’s history is itself connected with an ancient custom where the ancient Egyptians prepared painted portraits of the dead and laid them so that they showed from underneath the mummy bands. In the early centuries of our era, the Alexandrian school of painting had reached sufficient artistic perfection to allow of the existence of many artistic firms ready to produce, quickly and cheaply, portraits of the most striking realism. The Egyptians, when they equipped the dead man for the life beyond the grave, thanks to the strength of the priestly code, kept close to primitive materialism and surrounded the ‘everlasting’ home of the dead man with everything that characterised his life on earth. This was necessitated by their belief that the soul, though it had escaped from the body, was still bound to it by indissoluble ties and needed these make-believe surroundings for its continued existence. Hence they set up stelae with representations of offerings made at the tomb, and of kinsfolk praying that the soul should attain the good things of this world and entrance to the heavenly mansions. In the latest period towards the Christian era the exact portrait of the deceased, identified with his double (ka), took its place in the grave, and retained the powers of a mystic and vivifying image which maintained the link between the departed soul and the deserted body preserved in the form of a mummy. The funeral furnishers enclosed the mummy in a papier-mâché case with a coloured mask of the dead man. Later they substituted for this his portrait in the flat, painted on a separate board either from the life or after death, but with all the features and appearance of life. The board was slipped inside the tight mummy bands over the face: the picture gives sometimes just the head, sometimes the beginnings of the shoulders or the full bust. Cemeteries with such mummies have been found in the sandy shores of dried-up lakes in the Fayum, at Antinopolis and elsewhere, and have yielded whole series of realistic portraits. They are done by the encaustic method, that is, by the manipulation of heated coloured wax with a spatula. In these realistic heads we at once can see a highly developed technique and journeyman execution. The features are undoubtedly individual, the colours rich and bright, but the touch in the curls is dry. Round the lady’s neck is a fine gold chain with an amulet. The portraits were executed hastily; the pats of coloured wax have not been thoroughly melted. A typical manner is common to them all, a tendency to make the face look young, to slur over the signs of age and even of full manhood. The eyes are emphasised, to produce the illusion of life.[18]

10. Christ Pantocrator, 6th century.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt.

11. Saint Peter, 6th century.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt.

The wax technique was chosen for the Egyptian portraits because it was the quickest process, but by its nature, it demanded great skill in the craftsman and was accordingly expensive. As a result, we also have a whole series of similar portraits executed either in tempera (a mixture of egg white and lime) or in the regular egg technique with the yolk as medium. Two such in the State Russian Museum merely show the heads: they are painted on oblong boards, the width being greater than the height. The icon of Ss. Sergius and Bacchus in Kiev Theological Academy is of this shape, as are icons represented in paintings and suchlike; they all reproduce the type of long-shaped icon laid upon a coffin or sarcophagus. These very ancient examples show the same manner of working as is still practised by Russian icon-painters. The ground colour is a dark brown, upon this the features are painted first in reddish ochre and then in light brown, so that the ground colour gives the shading and finally the lighted planes (modelé) and the highlights are done in ochre mixed with white lead or in pure white lead. These highlights can be found in the work of the Russian icon-painters, who call them blik (German Blick), ozhívka (from ozhivát to enliven), or dvízhka (from dvígaf to move); in French rehaut, reflet, lumière.

In the faces, the eyes are rendered with special emphasis and force, first by a deep shaded orbit and next by the bold relief of the forehead, brows, eyelids and thick lashes, and finally by putting in the pupil and the shining point of its centre (svêtik – little light). Characteristic of an icon is it that it should give no more than the bust of the saint, but that the clothing of this, though showing no more than the shoulders, should indicate his calling in life, especially in the case of a priest, bishop, or patriarch. Russian icon-painters use the term ikóna opléchnaya (to the shoulders) as distinct from golovnáya (head), pogrudndya (bust to the breast), and stoyáchaya (standing, full length).

Another feature of the icon is that it always gives the picture of the Saviour (Spas), the Virgin or of some other saint as facing the worshipper, just as the painted portrait of the dead Egyptian was designed to look at his kinsfolk who were supposed to come to the reception-room of his resting place or to the spot where in the form of his swathed mummy he was buried in the sand. Representations of saints in profile were only to be found on small icons which were hung on to the saint’s big icon as votive reminders of a worshipper; or else they only came in with later times. Finally, the original type of the Egyptian portrait shows with special clearness in the colouring of the icon, particularly in the Russian icon: icons from Greece proper and other varieties frequently diverge from the early type. The reason for this is that the Russian icon, from first to last, drew its inspiration from Greco-Oriental models, these models coming at first from Egypt and Syria and later from Asia Minor which had early adopted the Greco-Oriental style. The Syro-Egyptian style was marked from the beginning by deep, rich, warm, and, at the same time, artistic colouring; on the one hand this reproduced the rich colouring of the Nile valley, on the other it reached the perfect ideal of a deep and rich colour-scale. This colouring reproduces both the hot, pallid buff of the desert sky during the burning Khamsin, and the glorious contrast of the dark lilac, velvety chocolate and reddish-brown mountains amid the buff sand of the desert. From this came the tones that run through Egyptian dress, decorated in dark lilac and chocolate brown on a ground of buff unbleached linen, and through the simple scale of Egyptian wall-paintings with brown and lilac on a buff ground. We find the same thing in the Ravenna mosaics: here the figures of holy men and women are almost without exception in pale buff with lilac adornments of clothes and insignia upon a dark blue ground. We shall later see that the icons which bear in Russian tradition the name of Korsún are all distinguished by a scale of dark chocolate or brown upon a buff ground and these Korsun’ icons, which came to Russia from Chersonesus Taurica, Caffa, and Trebizond, were copies of Greco-Oriental icons. Even more significant is it, that by setting out a series of icons, we can show how the early Venetian icon-painting with its rich and deep colouring, dark purple, dark lilac, dark green, rich blue, and dark brown or chocolate, was derived from the Greco-Oriental models. Great painters arrive at a consummate chiaroscuro, almost eliminate true colour and only make use of an endless gradation of tones. It turns out that this tonality was already in use in the earliest icon-painting. This is the place to emphasise the fact that it was only the use of a chiaroscuro which almost excluded colour which led in the case of certain iconic types to an unearthly paleness. Upon this paleness the aesthetic enthusiasts for icons have seized to support their view that the fundamental aim of the icon is to express the incorporeality of the saints in their orders. The fact is that the Syro-Egyptian type, in its historical form, was in existence in Russia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and was embodied in the icons of S. Nicholas the Wonderworker and S. John the Forerunner as rendered in certain severe styles. However, this was merely temporary and in no way to be taken as determinative for the majority of schools or for other periods. The essence of the icon consists in the traditional striving after strong relief: from this proceeded, as we shall see, the system of lightened planes in Byzantine and Russian icon-painting. The yolk of egg medium particularly lends itself to the system of laying one coat upon another, each made lighter than the last by the addition of white lead to the ochre. It also gives full value to the pure and bright colours of the pigments: in this it differs much from the western tempera (white of egg medium) which inevitably gives a dead tint to the flesh. At its point of departure, the icon derived both from a higher artistic portrait and from a more artistic technique, for the encaustic process demanded at once a skilled and practised craftsman and an artist of advanced talent. But of course, this situation could not remain for ever. It was rendered impossible by the transference of the craft to a fresh nation and the lack of models. The transfer of the icon from Syria and Egypt to Greece and Byzantium resulted in a striking difference in its characteristic features, this became more so the case when it came to Russia. Rich reddish ochre, a warm brown, brick-red, and black – these were the traditional colours of the Egyptian craft worked upon wood. On this basis came the addition of dark green, indigo, and deep lilac. Such is the colouring of the Greco-Oriental mosaics so far known to us, those in Cyprus, Ravenna, and some of those in Rome and of the Greco-Oriental icons. Quite different and incomparably brighter is the decorative colouring of the wall-paintings and mosaics of Constantinople, the true Byzantine style.[19] Accordingly, the Byzantine icon also makes a significant departure from the Greco-Oriental colouring, and adopts the bright tones of miniatures and frescoes. The same was the case at Novgorod, where the Greco-Oriental originals passed away and gave place to others, so that the icon-painters, left without models and painting iconostases, went over to a bright style of painting. In such cases the most characteristic feature is the predominance of so-called folk-colours, specifically, bright red (vermilion) and light green. In the ways outlined above, the icon resembled the portraits. What then are the fundamental differences? The icon of a saint differs from his portrait in being its mere copy or replica for which a general resemblance is sufficient; it keeps the general type of his face, his distinguishing marks, his character, but as it is a mere journeyman’s copy and it cannot give the refinements of individual features. The face of S. John the Baptist is always typical, but in it there is no individuality, so too in the faces of Mary and the other saints. Nonetheless, we can pursue this, and see how far icons derive from individual, though not artistic, portraits.

12. Bust of Saint Nicholas and Saints
in Medallions, 10th to 11th century.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt.

13. The Crucifixion and Saints
in Medallions, 11th to 12th century.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt.

14. The Annunciation, end of the 12th century.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt.

15. Our Lady with Child Between Two Angels,

6th to 7th century. Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome.

16. The Baptism of Christ, 10th century. Icon from one

of the Twelve Great Festivals of the Iconostasis.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt.

17. The Archangel Saint Michael, 11th century.

Icon of gilded silver, enamel and precious stones.

Saint Mark’s Basilica Treasure, Venice.

18. The Spiritual Ladder of
Saint John Climacus, 11th to 12th century.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt.

19. The Council of Nicaea I, Melkite Icon
from the 17th century. Abou Adal Collection, Paris.

The iconic type is also subject to history, as it has had different characteristics at different times. The Greco-Oriental icon gives us real or realistic types, whereas the Byzantine or purely Greek type, through its connexion with the idealistic Greek sculpture of the latest period and with Byzantine illuminated manuscripts, exchanges the realist principle for a generalized ideal model. We must not forget that the source of the icon is in the characteristic style adapted to the representation of departed relatives. Hence, the general outline of the portrait, its impressionism pose, its deep and thoughtful glance, turned downwards or to the side, the slightly drooping eyelids, the majestic restfulness, and a certain retirement from the outer world. All this was absorbed into the icon, and served as a foundation for the ideal features of Christ, the Virgin Mary, S. Nicholas and the like, being really a very ancient heritage from the severe religious art of Egypt. But, as Byzantine icon-painting was practised from the ninth century as a journeyman’s craft, only the general scheme or type of the icon was within its reach, and it was in this shape that it spread to Russia, Georgia, Armenia, the Balkans, southeastern Europe and Italy. Later, in each of these countries, under the influence of the efforts made by native craftsmen, this iconic scheme changes, comes to life, and likewise degenerates and loses its character.

When the pictured portrait of a saint became an icon the position it took was that of a devotional icon (molénnaya from molit’ sya to pray), that voiceless friend in the faith to whom people turned with their prayer, as if they were entrusting their prayers to him. As they prayed, they made the sign of the cross upon the breast and kissed the icon and this became the regular practice. It was just what was done when saying farewell to a martyr, when people signed themselves with the cross to signify to all around that they belonged to the Christian community and kissed him by way of farewell to the dead brother in the faith. The Church accepted the use of the icon as a pious popular custom which helped faith and gave it general support among the people, and allowed the icon to establish itself and spread, uncontrolled. At the beginning of the fifth century, the icon made its appearance in the church, initially in the martyria, the burial places of saints (memoriae) of which there were many in Egypt, Syria, near Tarsus, and elsewhere. Soon monastic communities began to supply pilgrims with mementoes, including pictures of the saints whom they honoured and representations of holy places which they had visited. Those who were devoted to a high ideal of doctrine came to Jerusalem and saw at the Holy Sepulchre the traffic in icons, little pictures, lamps, ampullae with oil from the holy places and relics and were indignant at the new idolatry, inconsolably crying out for the cleansing of the faith from superstition.[20] All this arose and developed on soil saturated with survivors of the ancient and oriental worlds. The same soil also gave birth to the Festival Icon with representations of those events of the Gospel such as the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Baptism of Our Lord, the Transfiguration, and the like. These events were first celebrated by services first and foremost at the places where they happened. Side by side with the paintings on the church walls, icons and portable pictures also bore representations of these events, in which the typical characteristics of the place and scene were supplied and the composition itself based upon reality. The pilgrims, when they looked at a picture of the Baptism of Our Lord, were reminded of the hilly banks of the Jordan and its swirling water and even of the column crowned with a cross which stood to mark the actual spot; and so the icon made for the pilgrims showed all these details. So too icons of the Nativity of Our Lord would show the hills of Bethlehem, the cave, and the manger, or the Crucifixion would have the walls of Jerusalem in the background.[21]

20. The Cross Raised on Three Levels,
Iconoclastic period, 13th century. Half-dome of the

sanctuary apse, Saint Irene Basilica, Istanbul.

21. Menology from the Month of February, c. 15th century.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt.

Remarkable is a series of icons painted on the lid of a wooden box of the sixth century from the Lateran treasure, now in the Vatican. The box is about 8 inches (20 cm.) long, shallow, and filled with a mass of wax and plaster in which are embedded pebbles and other fragments from holy places in Palestine. Five small-scale compositions show the Ascension and the Resurrection (or rather the Women at the Sepulchre) above, the Crucifixion across the middle, and below the Nativity and the Baptism. In this order the pilgrim had visited the holy places: the church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, the church of the Resurrection, the church of Golgotha in Jerusalem, the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem and the banks of the Jordan. Each subject is characteristic both in composition and in the types of the figures, but here we are concerned only with the material setting. The theme of the Resurrection is pictured In the form of the approach of the women to the sepulchre (Mary hastens thither first of all, in agreement with the Apocrypha current at the time). Accordingly the composition shows us the gates of the small rotunda of Our Lord’s sepulchre; this looks from outside like a low octagonal tower crowned by a conical metal roof like a bell-tent, with a cross at the top: the open doors allow us to see an altar with a cross upon it in the front room of the sepulchre, now the Chapel of the Angel. The sepulchre is a cave hewn out of the rock. The cover is protected from top to bottom by a grille or trellis. Above the pointed roof hangs (from the ceiling of Constantine’s great rotunda, the church of the Anastasis) a circular candelabrum such as used to be called rota, later corona luminis, a hoop with openings in it to take lamps. To this day the pilgrims take away from Jerusalem as mementoes icons of the Resurrection with a picture of the modern marble canopy which contains the remains of the cave; out of its doors rises Christ, flying upwards according to the Catholic representation.

The scene of the Nativity gives also an ancient recollection of the cave at Bethlehem, still open and accessible from outside to pilgrims, as it was before Constantine built his great church over it. The cave is a shallow niche hewn in the rock, above it is the star, within is the manger with the Child, at the entrance on the left Mary lies on a mattress, on the right Joseph sits sleepily. Jesus at his Baptism is figured as a child standing in the water up to his neck. John puts his hand upon him, two disciples stand behind, on the right are two Angels offering towels and above the hand of God sending down the Dove. This is a very ancient composition, as are those of the Ascension and of the Crucifixion, with the two thieves (youthful) and the figure of Christ clothed in the purple robe. This type goes back to the fourth or fifth century. Other surviving icons point to the Syro-Egyptian origins of this kind of painting. First we must mention the well-known tradition of the Vernicle, the napkin at Edessa upon which the face of Christ was imprinted. We have copies of this under the names of the Holy Mandylion,[22] ‘the image not made with hands’, and ‘the holy napkin’, in wall-paintings from the eleventh or twelfth centuries, and devotional icons of this type are very common in Russia from the fourteenth century. This tradition was clearly founded upon the Egyptian portraits painted upon mummy cloths. It is well known that the Byzantine icon that rose to prominence in the fifth to sixth centuries was afterwards brought to a sudden stop by the growth in the eighth century of the iconoclastic movement, which systematically exterminated every production of the Byzantine craft to the extent that we can do no more than guess about it and search out traces of the ancient Greco-Oriental originals in the productions of late times. We have no single example of Byzantine icon-painting older than the ninth century. Of course, for the purpose of the history of the Russian icon we need not go beyond those later Byzantine examples, Russians would see and copy no icons till the tenth and eleventh centuries, but we must not shut our eyes to the changes due to the iconoclastic persecutions. We have, for instance, during the time of the iconoclasts the curious legend of the ‘icon-toys’ of the Empress Theodora. To judge by the account of their sizes these were little panels four or six inches long, which could be used by the icon worshippers in secret, so as not to draw upon themselves the persecutions of the iconoclasts. As if on purpose, fate has preserved for us one of these toys, an icon with the head and bust of S. Stephen, the first martyr.[23] It is of the seventh or eighth century, but was half destroyed in ancient times so that of the original painting only the head of the saint remains. In the tenth or eleventh century, after the veneration of icons had been restored, the shoulders were supplied in a different style and made too large in proportion to the small, neat head of the ancient type. There are many other Greek icons of about the same small dimensions as this, but they are all of later date. So, miniature Greek triptychs were made for use on journeys or for distribution to pilgrims. Hence, it appears that though the iconoclasts caused others to hide their icons away in their houses for a season, the result was a contribution to the development of the devotional icon.

Iconoclasm was a reaction against the spread of the veneration of icons painted upon wood because these, far more than wall-paintings, put representations of God and the saints into people’s hands and made them common objects. The arguments for this ideological position might then have been expected to give us a full account of the development of the painting of icons upon wood. But there is nothing of the kind. They merely tell us of exaggerated cases of icon worship: they called their opponents wood worshippers. The icons had become the objects of superstitious rites; the people were adorning them with decorations and with jewels; they were publicly censed in the churches; they were used for the healing of the sick; the sick were led to sleep in their presence and dream under their inspiration, a survival of the pagan incubatio. Special icons came into use to celebrate birthdays, weddings, funerals, to give form to vows and to the memory of the dead. If a well dried up, an icon was cast into it; cloth was sanctified by being spread upon an icon, they were given to the godparents at a christening; paint was scraped off an icon and mixed with bread for the Communion; the bread was laid upon an icon and used for the Communion.

But besides these accounts of the extremes to which the venerators of icons went, we get nothing from either the attack or defence, save the commonplaces of controversy.[24] The iconoclasts, at their council of A.D. 754, gave full expression to their teaching and the accusations- they accused recent Orthodox practice of idolatry and service of idols and cited against it all that they could find in the Bible, how that the institution of icons had no justification in the teaching of Christ or his Apostles, nor yet in the tradition of the Fathers, that there did not even exist a form of prayer for consecrating icons, the icon is not to be reconciled with serving God in spirit, the icon can only represent the human nature, it cannot and must not represent the God-man, icon-painters serve the cause of the Arian, Monophysite and Nestorian heresies; there is no ground for representing angels in human form with wings. The Blessed Virgin, the Apostles, Prophets, and Martyrs are capable of representation, but if it is impossible to represent Christ there is no need for these other icons.

When, after the first introduction of the reform, the churches had been purged of icons, the group of iconoclastic theologians and prelates considered that their demands were satisfied - the wooden icons in the churches had been set so high upon the walls that they were out of reach of ‘kissing’ and suchlike. But the cause of the iconoclasts was closely linked with the problems of another political struggle, that of the army and administration against the monks, their violence and excessive influence upon the affairs of the Empire and great cities. Thus cruel and senseless destruction began: icons were burnt, or the painting on them burnt off with boiling tar, they were chopped up, manuscripts with pictures were destroyed, mosaics sawn off, the libraries of the monasteries destroyed, and defenders of the veneration of icons subjected to persecution. Nor do we find in the resolutions of the Orthodox Council of A.D. 787 and in the works of the defenders of icons any definite historical proofs in their favour, only abstract arguments justifying the veneration of icons in principle: icons are no idols; they are venerable as representations of what is holy; honour paid to an icon is honour to its original. An icon of Christ represents Him in His human nature; those who reject such icons reduce the mystery of the Incarnation to a phantom. The icon teaches faith and morals and is a help to those who cannot read. The Church seeks to enlist the sense of sight to make men praise God; the icon helps this state of mind and brings people up in the love of God. There is no prayer for the consecration of an icon, but no more is there for the consecration of a cross. Just as love for our nearest and dearest creates desire for their portraits, so it is natural for Christians to have representations of Christ and the saints. The prohibition of idols in the Old Testament had a temporary validity, but the Christian law is to last for ever.