Icon

Byzantine iconoclasm ran in two waves, roughly 726 to 787 and again from 814 to 843, and it was not a debate. Images were destroyed on a large scale, and their defenders were exiled, imprisoned, mutilated and in some cases killed.

The argument against images was serious and is worth stating as its holders held it. The second commandment forbids graven images. Christianity had defined itself against the image-worship of its neighbours. Whatever the theological refinements, ordinary people plainly were praying to boards, and the distinction between the image and what it depicted was collapsing in practice. Islamic and Jewish neighbours made the charge directly, and it stung.

The defence, worked out chiefly by John of Damascus and later Theodore the Studite, met it on doctrinal ground rather than on sentiment. If God took a body, then God became depictable, and refusing to depict him amounts to denying that the incarnation was real. The prohibition on images belonged to a period before that happened. To this was added a distinction of terms: proskynesis, the veneration paid to an image, is different in kind from latreia, the worship owed to God alone, and the honour paid to an image passes to what it depicts.

The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 accepted that argument, and the final restoration in 843 is still commemorated each year as the Triumph of Orthodoxy. The consequence is that in Eastern Christianity the icon is not decoration and its defence is not a matter of taste. It was settled at the level of doctrine, at considerable cost, and Orthodox theology has treated it as settled ever since.

Icon painters describe their work as writing an icon rather than painting one, a distinction that signals the process is understood as following a received pattern rather than as free artistic composition.

Materials and method

An icon is built on a wood panel, traditionally linden or cypress, first covered with linen cloth glued down and then several layers of gesso sanded smooth. The image is painted in egg tempera, pigment bound with egg yolk, applied in a fixed sequence from dark underpainting toward lighter highlights, with the background frequently covered in gold leaf applied over a red clay ground called bole and burnished to a shine. This sequence is taught and repeated rather than improvised, which is part of why icons across centuries and regions resemble one another so closely.

Who writes one, and what happens to a damaged icon

Traditionally an iconographer is a monastic or a lay painter trained within that discipline, often undertaking prayer and fasting before beginning a new icon, with major centers of production historically including Mount Athos and, more recently, dedicated icon painting schools training laypeople as well. Any icon may be venerated by the laity once completed, kissed and honored with incense, without restriction on who may pray before it. A damaged icon is not thrown away, it is restored where possible, and where it cannot be, Orthodox custom in some regions has it burned or set afloat on water rather than discarded as ordinary refuse.