The desire to capture images of the gods and celestial beings was inherent in people at all times. Evidences of this are the monuments of art and architecture of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome. Christianity fostered a new type of painting, which is called “
icon painting” — creation of sacred images that are used for prayer and adoration.
According to tradition, the first great icon painter was the evangelist Luke. Following him, other artists who believed in the resurrected Christ began to draw the image of the Saviour. The most ancient icons that have survived to our times are of the 6th century, they were found in the Sinai monastery.
Until the eighth century, there were no single canons in icon painting. Icon painters of those years transferred their vision of biblical events onto the canvas and wood – the artists worked in their own way, depicting the same subject in different manner, which complicated its perception by the ordinary people. Over time, a special symbolic language was developed, which included the main visual techniques that were used to paint sacred images. This allowed the images of the Saints and depicted stories from the Bible to be easily recognizable.
At the end of the 10th century, Christianity came to Kiev, bringing icon painting along. For 800 years, this type of art was the main one in the Old Ruthenian culture. The images painted by ancient Ruthenian icon painters are strikingly different from the works by European masters: the Orthodox faces of Saints are characterized by excessive asceticism and detachment. This technique was used to emphasize the dissimilarity of Saints to ordinary people, their peculiarity and belonging to another world.
Icons were the main decoration of temples and houses: a wide variety of shades was used to create them, turning the image into a bright, eye-catching picture, which fascinated with its hidden meanings and the play of colours. In peasant’s huts and merchant’s houses, the icons were placed in plain sight – in the “beautiful corner”. They were not only evidence of religiosity, but also a kind of symbol of affluence: commoners made do with inexpensive images bought at the fair, and the rich decorated their houses with custom-painted icons.
Arthive invites you for a tour into the wonderful world of icon painting and get acquainted with the works created by such great icon painters as
Theophanes the Greek,
Andrei Rublev,
Daniel Chorny,
Simon Ushakov,
Dionysius,
Gury Nikitin.
