An icon (from the Greek word "eikon," "image") is a wooden panel painting of a holy person or scene from Orthodox Christianity, the religion of the Byzantine Empire that is practiced today mainly in Greece and Russia. It was believed that these works acted as intermediaries between worshipers and the holy personages they depicted. Their pictorial language is stylized and primarily symbolic, rather than literal and narrative. Indeed, every attitude, pose, and color depicted in an icon has a precise meaning, and their painters--usually monks--followed prescribed models from iconographic manuals. The goal of this book is to catalogue the vast heritage of images according to iconographic type and subject, from the most ancient at the Monastery of Saint Catherine in the Sinai to those from Greece, Constantinople, and Russia. Chapters focus on the role of icons in the Orthodox liturgy and on common iconic subjects, including the fathers and saints of the Eastern Church and the life of Jesus and his followers. As with other volumes in the Guide to Imagery series, this book includes a wealth of color illustrations in which details are called out for discussion.

The Rena Andreadis icon collection is one of the best known private collections of its kind. It contains Greek icons ranging from the 14th to the 18th century, covering a wide geographical area from Constantinople and mainland Greece to Crete and the Ionian islands. Among them are celebrated works which have frequently been on display to specialists and the general public in exhibitions both in Greece and abroad, and others which are still unknown. The subject matter of the works is particularly varied, combining the most widespread and popular subjects of portable icon painting with others, more unusual, which were dominant in particular regions and periods. From every point of view the Andreadis collection offers a panorama of Greek portable icons and an opportunity to discover the elements they have in common and the multiformity of expression which distinguishes them. It is a challenge which can only be met by linking the works to the equally confused and complex historical path of Hellenism throughout the same centuries.

Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity presents a critical, interdisciplinary examination of contemporary theological and philosophical studies of the Christian image and redefines this within the Orthodox tradition by exploring the ontological and aesthetic implications of Orthodox ascetic and mystical theology. It finds Modernist interest in the aesthetic peculiarity of icons significant, and essential for re-evaluating their relationship to non-representational art. Drawing on classical Greek art criticism, Byzantine ekphraseis and hymnography, and the theologies of St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Symeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory Palamas, the author argues that the ancient Greek concept of enargeia best conveys the expression of theophany and theosis in art. The qualities that define enargeia - inherent liveliness, expressive autonomy and self-subsisting form - are identified in exemplary Greek and Russian icons and considered in the context of the hesychastic theology that lies at the heart of Orthodox Christianity. An Orthodox aesthetics is thus outlined that recognizes the transcendent being of art and is open to dialogue with diverse pictorial and iconographic traditions. An examination of Ch’an (Zen) art theory and a comparison of icons with paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko and Marc Chagall, and by Japanese artists influenced by Zen Buddhism, reveal intriguing points of convergence and difference. The reader will find in these pages reasons to reconcile Modernism with the Christian image and Orthodox tradition with creative form in art.

In AD 726, the Byzantine emperor ordered the destruction of all icons, or religious images, throughout the empire, and icons were subject to an imperial ban that was to last, with a brief remission, until AD 843. A defender of icons, St John of Damascus wrote three treatises against "those who attack the holy images." He differentiates between the veneration of icons, which is a matter of expressing honor, and idolatry, which is offering worship to something other than God.

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"This illustrated book presents a collection of unique icons not usually seen outside the confines of the living room. A collection assembled by the brothers Simon and Hugo Morsink, both passionate icon lovers and art dealers. Accompanying texts, to which international experts have contributed, explain the meaning of these Greek and Russian icons, dating from the 15th to the 19th century, while several essays take the reader inside the world of this ancient Christian art form."--BOOK JACKET.