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 one of the most remarkable works of the famous Crete iconographer Andreas Ritzos (1422-1492) – his brilliant interpretation of the Mother of God Passion, known in the West as “Madre del Perpetuo Socorro” (Virgin Perpetual Help). Today one of its versions, attributed to Ritzos (the painter reproduced his work repeatedly) is kept in the National Gallery of Parma (Italy). Copies of it were made both by his contemporaries and by the following generations of icon painters and thus the schema he developed quickly left the boundaries of the island and spread to continental Greece, Mount Athos and the Balkans but also to the East – to Russia.
Mother of God Perpetual Help has elements, identifying for the formula, and they are the presence of one or two archangels with the instruments of Christ’s passions (a cross, a spear, a reed with a sponge) and the gesture of the Infant, Who seeks protection. The crossed feet of the Son of God and His bare heel, turned towards the observer – the symbol of the mortal flesh He has taken on with His Incarnation – add to the thematic content of the icon.
The iconographic origin of this Mother of God type is referable to the Komnin times and is the earliest image known, which is preserved in the mural ensemble of Panagia Arakiotissa church in Lagoudera on the island of Cyprus – 1192. It presents the finished schema of the type with all the mentioned elements, suggesting the inevitable Sacrifice to come.
The second composition lasted only too short a time and did not become very popular. Known as Nikopea, it presents the Mother of God with a shield in front of her breast with the image of Christ-Emanuel on it (St. Sophia church in Ohrid (Macedonia) - 1140).
Mother of God Perpetual Help appeared in Cyprus mural painting only a year after the island was captured by representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and later, with the beginning of the Turkish presence in Crete at the end of the fifteenth century, it became popular in the icon painting there as well. These facts show how the enforcement of limits on state systems and religion can bring forward spiritual works of art with passion, eschatological or sotirological topics.
The words of Archangel Gabriel to the Holy Mother of God find their equivalent in another verse from the Passion Week canon in the Lenten Triod. Between the fifteenth and the seventeenth century it was often written on the Infant’s scroll from the composition of Sleepless Eye. The latter type also includes the archangel with the instruments of Christ’s Passions, already familiar to us from the Perpetual Help.
“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.