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A History of Icon Painting.
Hardback,
288 pages
Over 500 full colour illustrations
Price. £19.95.
ISBN 0955008905
Publishers: Grand-Holding Publishers, Moscow, and Orthodox Christian Books
Ltd., U.K. English edition published April 2005 (Russian edition in 2002).
Reviewed by Aidan Hart |
This is an excellent book and highly
recommended, both for serious students and for the general reader. It is
really a compact encyclopaedia on the history of icons, with each chapter
being written by one or two of the nine specialist authors. Although all
Russian, the writers do successfully cover the history of the icon
throughout the whole Orthodox world. The book dedicates 77 pages to
Byzantine and Post-Byzantine icons, as well as having individual chapters
covering icons from Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Romania, and another
covering icons of Serbia, Bulgaria and Macedonia. And though scholarly, the
chapters are easily read and are imbued with the spirituality of their
authors' faith.
The colour prints are of excellent quality, and include useful details as
well as complete works. Efforts have been made to place illustrations on the
same page as the texts that refer to them, which greatly assists ease of
reading.
As the title suggests, the book's emphasis is on the history of icon
painting rather than its theology or technique. However, of the book's
seventeen sections the opening chapter is dedicated to the theology of
icons, and the second to the technique of painting.
Consistent with its comprehensive scope, the book does not eschew covering
the more decadent periods of the tradition, and devotes a whole chapter to
Russian icons of the 18th to early 20th centuries.
A twenty page chronological table of the Orthodox Church's history is
another useful educational feature.
Of particular interest is the brief 18 page survey of iconographers of the
twentieth century. Though it concentrates on those in Russia, it does also
describe, albeit briefly, the situation in Greece, Cyprus, the Balkans and
the West. And it is not a mere historical survey. The co-authors make
perceptive observations on the weaknesses and strengths of last century's
iconography, and intelligently describe some of the challenges facing us in
this time of revival of traditional church art. They chiefly emphasise the
need to enter the tradition deeply and work creatively from within it,
avoiding mindless and soulless copying on the one hand, and unspiritual
innovations on the other. "Icon painting is a traditional art and like any
art it implies creativity," they write. "The hardest thing for the icon
painter is to find a balance between observance of the canon and creativity,
which is always individual, between following tradition and innovation,
which is an integral part of living art."
Also of interest is the identification, in chapter two, of a traditional
painting technique that in previous books has been ascribed only to decadent
Western painting. Up to now, the received wisdom has been that icons always
work from dark to light. Briefly put, the technique described in this book
involves the working of shadows as well as highlights. Sometimes in the
first layer the form is fully modelled in monochrome and left visible
through the subsequent layers of lighter flesh tones. The chapter also
describes how during the progress of painting, shadows were sometimes
reinforced. The author (Anna Yakovleva) supports the veracity of her claim
by including magnified photo details of old icons, and by reference to old
manuals, such as that by the 13th century Theophilus the Presbyter. This
technique is in fact the one used by the leading Russian iconographer,
Archimandrite Zenon.
The superb quality of the illustrations would alone make this a worthwhile
purchase. Put this together with the information packed text, and we have a
winner.
Reviewed by Aidan Hart, iconographer.
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