Iconographic Terms

Icon
Icons are flat pictures, usually painted in egg tempora on wood, but also wrought in mosaic, ivory, and other materials, to represent Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, or another saint, which are venerated in the Eastern Church. As it is believed that through them the saints exercise their beneficent powers, they preside at all important events of human life and are held to be powerful channels of grace. One does not "paint" an icon, one "writes" an icon.

  

Iconoclastic Controversy
The controversy on the veneration of icons that agitated the Greek Church from c.725 to 842. In 726 the Emperor Leo III published a decree declaring all images idols and ordering their destruction. Disturbances followed persecution, especially of the monks Synod of Hieria, which alleged that, by representing only the humanity of Christ, the icon-worshippers either divided His unity as the Nestorians or confounded the two natures as the Monophysites, and declared that the icons of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints were idols and ordered their destruction. Persecution increased. It abated under Leo IV (775-80), and after his death the Empress Irene, regent for her son, reversed the policy of her predecessors. The Second Council of Nicaea in 78'7 undid the work of the Synod of Hieria, defined the degree of veneration to be paid to icons, and decreed their restoration throughout the country.

The outbreak of the `Second Iconoclastic Controversy' took place in 814 under Leo V the Armenian, who removed icons from churches and public buildings; the Patr. Nicephorus was deposed (815), and St. Theodore of Studios was sent into exile. Persecution ended only with the death of the Emperor Theophilus in 842. His widow, Theodora, caused Methodius to be elected patriarch in 843 and on the first Sunday in Lent a feast was celebrated in honour of the icons; it has since been kept in the Eastern Church as the 'Feast of Orthodoxy.'

 

Christian Iconography
 The earliest Christian art was mainly symbolical: Christ was represented by a fish or as a young shepherd, the Church by a ship. It was soon possible to detect a difference of emphasis in the East and West, the East stressing the liturgical function of art, whereas the W. regarded art as providing pictorial illustrations of biblical events and religious doctrines. Byzantine churches often exhibit a planned system of stylized and didactic decoration covering the whole interior. In the West, partly under the influence of the growing devotion to Christ's humanity, a new realistic, less symbolic style of art began to develop from the 12th cent. While individualism had some play, art commonly conformed to a pattern determined by the Church. In the 14th cent. religious art grew less intellectual and more emotional; in the 15th cent. it became frankly realistic and picturesque.

 
Pastiglia
Italian term used to describe the raised decoration on an icon. Pastiglia decoration was made from white powder formed when ground lead was exposed to vinegar vapour in a sealed jar. It was then mixed with egg white to make a malleable paste; and lead moulds were used to stamp out relief figures or decorative motifs, which were applied with rabbit-skin glue to the gilding. These days pastiglia is simply thickened gesso or plaster, applied with a small artist's brush.
 
OKHLAD
Metal icon covers that only allow the hands and face of the underlying icon to be seen. The use of okhlads grew out of the ancient practice of covering the frames of icons with precious metals and stones out of honor. In the fourteenth century, as the wealth of the church and veneration of icons grew, crowns and collars of precious metals began to appear on the Virgin and Christ. By the sixteenth century in Russia, a covering called a riza was developed to fit over all of the pictorial field except the figures. By the eighteenth century, a metal okhlad would leave only the flesh tones of the painting exposed. The okhlad served to protect the icon's surface from the accumulated soot and smoke of burning candles. In later centuries, the covering was thought to protect the image from profane eyes. The outline of the image under the okhlad is usually repeated in a form of relief on its surface. Eventually, the custom of covering contributed to the degeneracy of iconography. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries what was hidden by the okhlad completely disappeared as the painters began to paint only the hands and faces of figures. The removal of the covering would reveal a vacuous swirl of plain paint around a head of Christ and His hands, a sad document of the decline of a majestic, religious craft.
 
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