An interview on the "Errors and Pitfalls in Icon Painting"

A truly wonderful article from Pravmir on the modern practice of icon writing and the problems that result of a relative silence from hierarchs on the topic. If you're interested in icons at all this is a must read.

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(pravmir.com) - Have you ever wondered why the faces of saints on some icons are so stern and threatening that they are frightening to look at? Why was St Christopher portrayed with a dog’s head which made him look more like the Egyptian god Anubis than a Christian saint? Is it right to portray God the Father as a gray-haired old man? Can we consider Vrubel’s and Vasnetsov’s images of angels and saints to be icons?

St Christopher. Icon of the first half of the 17th century.

Although icons and the Church are virtually as old as one another and icons have been painted for centuries according to strict rules, yet in this field too there are errors, disagreements and arguments. What should our attitude be? Ekaterina Dmitrievna Sheko, Head of the Department of Iconography at St Tikhon’s Orthodox University, explains.

- Ekaterina Dmitrievna, we can find controversial subjects in icons, subjects that are troubling. One of the clearest examples is the image of St Christopher with a dog’s head. (According to his life, he was very handsome and suffered greatly from the attentions of women. So he beseeched God to make him ugly to avoid temptation. God granted this wish – Author). What should we make of this?

- The portrayal of St Christopher with a dog’s head was prohibited by Synodal order in 1722. But popularly he continued to be portrayed in this way even after the prohibition, in order to make him stand out him from all the other saints. However, in Serbia or in Western Europe, for example, St Christopher is portrayed in a different way, carrying a boy across a river on his shoulders. This is a tradition.

- What is the difference between a tradition of painting and a rule?

- Rules for Church services clearly define certain rules and acts, but it is difficult to do this in the field of icon painting, since – generally speaking – a rule here is above all a tradition. Nowhere does it say that you have to paint this way and no other way. But the tradition itself was formed by generations of believers, many of whom ascended to higher levels of the knowledge of God than we do today through their ascetic life and prayer. This is why when the artist and icon-painter studies traditional iconographic techniques, he draws closer to the knowledge of the truth...

Complete article here.