CONTEXT
In the context of the Incarnation dogma, the icon (in Greek, image) is perceived as a specific mediator, which transports the mystic presence of the sacral archetype to the worshipper. Following the relation icon – prayer – salvation, even the ancient Christians considered the holy images as able to open up for the believers the doors to God’s grace.
The icons role is identical to that of the Gospel, and its liturgical, dogmatic and didactic meaning is not an exception because the Sacred Scripture and the sacred image are one and the same evidence, expressed in two different ways, which “refer to and clarify” each other.
Such an interpretation calls for a clarification of the concept of “canon” as a wholeness of written and unwritten rules which make the given piece of church art understandable for the believers and responding to their spiritual needs. The canon, very much like grammar for the writer, helps the author yet by no means limits his/her artistic expression. Thus, the meaning of the icon is not only in its beauty as a piece of art but it lies also in the fact that it expresses beauty related to the Divine.
The Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical council (787) have placed a clear limit between a portrait and an icon. If the portrait presents the physical lines, the character and the psychology of a person, the icon presents the image of the person united with God. Standing quite apart from the portrait in its essence, the icon requires forms of expression, which correspond to its content and which could present sanctity to our earthly eyes.
Colors and lines in the icon construct a space essentially different from that in the realistic painting because the icon does not aim at illusionist effects, nor does it try to mislead the observer, presenting the depicted “as seen”.
The model for this Contemporary Antique Masterwork (55 x 40 cm. approx.) is a remarkable monument of the Crete-Venetian school from the mid seventeenth century – an icon “Saint George Kills the Dragon”, which is kept today in San Salvatore church in Chania (Crete). Their author, Father Emmanuel Tzanes – Bounialis, was among the leading representatives of the school. A number of murals and icons of exceptional quality from between the 1640s and the 1680s on the island of Crete, the island of Corfu and in Venice are attributed to him.
The present contemporary icon treats the popular iconography of the Cappadocian warrior-saint, presenting him as a rider and dragon-fighter. The earliest images of this formula are related to the eastern Byzantine provinces, to Egypt and the Transcaucasus and are dated between the fifth and the seventh century.
At the end of the eleventh century, however, medieval literature did not present evidence of a miracle, where St. George kills a dragon; in the earlier versions of the miracle with the king’s daughter, he was described as killing the monster with prayer and the sign of the Cross, not with a spear.
While looking for sources for the early dragon-fighting iconography of the saint, we cannot miss the fourth century popular schema of the Emperor-rider, who pierces a dragon. Alluding to St. Constantine the Great, the semantics of this formula refers by analogy to the text of the Revelation of St. John the Theologian (Rev. 6:2). The white rider from the Apocalypse is seen as an allegory of Christianity which defeats the evil powers usually personified by a dragon.
During the Middle Ages St. George was a patron and protector of the armies of generations of Byzantine emperors, Bulgarian czars, Russian princes, Serbian, German and English kings, but also of a whole country – Georgia. The dragon-fighting iconography of St. George is also very popular in South Italy, where until the end of the twelfth century the ethnic specifics of the population determined the strong Byzantine influence.
The earliest monuments presenting St. George as a dragon-fighter (5th-7th cc.) are related to Northern Africa and the Transcaucasus. These are predominantly relief depictions of the saint on ceramic icons and clay lamps from Carthage, and on ivories from Bauit. In the seventh century the image of St. George the dragon-fighter was present on murals or was carved in monumental stone relief in the programs of some Armenian (near Thalin) and Georgian (near Martvili) churches.
“Of Your own we have given you” – these were the words of King David’s prayer over all the building materials gathered by him for the erection of the Jerusalem Temple (1 Ch 29:14). So, with the icon, the question of the materials used has to do not only with their quality but most of all with their genuineness.
The material used as a basis for each of the icons is a well-dried lime or deal panel (board) of vertically joint three or four segments, 2.5 cm each. To avoid possible warping, the back of the panel is additionally strengthened by pegs (cross-wedged laths). The face of the board is indented. The so called “casket”, 2 cm. wide and about 0.5 cm. high, preserves the icon surface from mechanical damage during transportation.
The preparation of the base for gilding and painting undergoes several stages. The facial side of the icon is first coated with a thick solution of bone glue over which a thin linen cloth is placed. It serves as a kind of fixture for the primer, preserves it from the natural contraction and expansion of the wood.
The priming is the next important stage from the preparation of the icon panel. The primer is a weak solution of bone glue, chalk and yolk, mixed in a specific proportion; after straining, it is laid on the base a number of times. When the last layer dries up the primer if finely polished which guarantees the quality of the gilding. The gold sheets are glued to the surface with the help of a thin layer of bolus or poliment, which is activated after drying up with the help of a solution.
After gilding (this author works with entirely gilded bases) the graphic contours of the depictions are laid and the whole icon surface is polished. The technique of polishing the author uses requires a lot of practice time and was once emblematic for the icon painting school at St. Catherine monastery in Sinai.
It is closely connected to the popularization of the spiritual practices of hesychasm among the Sinai brotherhood and it expresses the aesthetics of the teaching: the nuclear theory about the hierarchic structure of Christian spirituality resonates in the gradation of the light effects in the gilding.
The coming together of soul and Divine Grace presents the highest degree of spiritual perfection, the brightening, and finds its visual expression in the circularly polished halos of the saints, equivalent in content and plastic expression to the other compositional symbols of the Uncreated Divine light – heavenly segments, radiance, rays, mandorlas, etc.
With the construction of the robes the author often uses the “probaster” technique which was used in the Middle Ages as a form of decoration with polychrome Roman sculpture and between the seventeenth and the nineteenth century it became extremely popular on the Balkans and in eastern Christian icon painting as a whole.
The icon is not just a masterpiece but it is also a sacred object because its true virtues are neither in the gilt effects, nor in the marvelous color choice, nor in the technical mastery; however high the artistic qualities themselves are, they are not enough to fully reveal the revelation of the liturgical image.