Icons

An icon (Greek eikōn, "image") is a holy image, usually painted on a wooden panel, of Christ, the Virgin Mary or a saint. In the Orthodox churches of the Byzantine world and later of Russia, Greece and the Balkans, icons are honored with candles, bows and prayer; the honor is understood to pass to the person shown, not the wood and paint.

Icons were painted in egg tempera on a wooden panel coated with gesso (a smooth white ground of chalk or gypsum and glue), often with gold leaf behind the figures. Painters worked from dark to light, laying thin layers of brighter color over a darker base to build up faces.

Looking closely: The Virgin of Vladimir. Mary holds the Christ Child, who presses his cheek against hers and clings to her. This type is called the Eleousa, "of tenderness." Her face is long and grave, with a small mouth, a long nose and large, sad eyes that look past the child toward us, as if she knows his future. The dark robes are simple shapes; the child's robe glints with gold lines. The faces are the original 12th-century paint; other parts were repainted over the centuries. Sent from Constantinople to Kiev in the 1130s, the icon was taken to Vladimir in 1155 and to Moscow in 1395, and it became one of the most honored images in Russia.

Icons were not always accepted. From about 726 to 787, and again from 815 to 843, Byzantine emperors banned religious images, a period called Iconoclasm ("image-breaking"), and many were destroyed. In 843 icons were restored for good, which is one reason so few earlier icons survive.