What Is an Icon?

An icon is a sacred religious image, most commonly a painted panel in egg tempera on a wooden board, used in Orthodox Christianity and other Eastern Christian traditions as an object of veneration, prayer, and theological reflection. The word comes from the Greek eikōn, meaning “image” or “likeness,” and in Orthodox Christian theology the icon is understood to be a window into the divine: a material image that mediates between the human worshipper and the holy figure or event it represents. The veneration of icons is one of the defining features of Eastern Orthodox practice, and the icon itself is one of the most distinctive and influential art forms in the history of the early Middle Ages.

The argument below links to the related treatment of the iconoclasm controversy, the related question of why Byzantine icons were destroyed, and the broader treatment of early Christian and Byzantine art.

The Theological Defense of the Icon

The theological defense of the icon was developed in the eighth and ninth centuries in response to the Byzantine iconoclasts, who argued that the veneration of religious images was idolatry and that the production of such images was forbidden by the Old Testament commandment “You shall not make for yourself a graven image.” The iconophile defenders of the image, of whom John of Damascus and Theodore the Studite are the most important, argued that the honor paid to the image passed through the image to its prototype — the holy person or sacred event represented — and that this veneration was therefore not idolatry but a proper respect for the holy.

The iconophile theology was formally accepted at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, briefly reversed during the second phase of iconoclasm from 815 to 843, and definitively affirmed in 843 when the empress Theodora restored the icons in an event still celebrated in the Orthodox Church as the Triumph of Orthodoxy. The distinction between veneration (proskynēsis) and worship (latreia) — veneration being appropriate for the icon and the holy person it represents, and worship being reserved for God alone — became the central theological distinction of the Orthodox tradition. The icon was understood to be a sacramental object, a material sign of a sacred reality, and the act of veneration was understood to be a form of prayer.

The Materials and Technique of Icon Painting

The icon was painted on a wooden panel, traditionally made of seasoned cypress, lime, or pine, prepared with several layers of gesso (a mixture of chalk and animal glue). The artist sketched the composition in lead, charcoal, or red ochre, then applied the colors in egg tempera — pigments ground in egg yolk thinned with water — in a sequence of thin layers. The gold ground, the characteristic background of the Byzantine icon, was applied as gold leaf laid over a red-brown bole and burnished with a polished stone or a tooth. The technique required considerable training: most icon painters underwent a long apprenticeship, often of seven years or more, and the tradition was a hereditary and tightly guarded craft.

The pigments of the icon painter were a small but extremely well-chosen palette. The most expensive was ultramarine, made from lapis lazuli imported from Afghanistan, used for the blue of the Virgin’s robe and the heavenly background. The most prestigious was Tyrian purple, made from the secretions of the murex sea snail, used for the robes of Christ and the Virgin. The other pigments included vermilion, malachite, azurite, orpiment, red ochre, yellow ochre, and lead white. The pigments were applied in a sequence of layers, with the darkest tones laid first and the highlights and final details added in the final stages.

The icon was typically protected by a riznica (a metal cover, often silver or gold, that covered the icon except for the face and hands of the holy figure) and an oklad (a metal cover that covered the entire icon). The cover was often decorated with enamel, precious stones, and repoussé metalwork, and the icon itself was often framed in a wooden or metal frame, sometimes elaborately carved and gilded. The icon was used in the liturgy, displayed on the iconostasis (the screen that separates the nave from the sanctuary in the Orthodox church), venerated with a kiss, an act of bowing, the burning of candles and incense, and the use of holy water.

The Major Iconographic Types

The iconographic types of the Byzantine icon were standardized in the post-iconoclast period and became the standard visual vocabulary of Orthodox Christianity. The most important types include the Christ Pantocrator (“Ruler of All”), the half-length portrait of Christ as a bearded, long-haired, frontal figure; the Hodegetria (“She who shows the Way”), the type of the Virgin and Child in which the Virgin gestures toward the Christ Child; the Eleousa (“Tenderness”), the type in which the Virgin and Child embrace; the Galaktotrophousa (“Milk-feeder”), the type in which the Virgin nurses the Christ Child; the Orans (the praying figure, with arms raised), the type of the Virgin in prayer; the Crucifixion; the Deësis (“Entreaty”), the type in which the Virgin and John the Baptist intercede with Christ; and the icons of the saints, the evangelists, the church feasts, and the saints of the local church.

The major surviving icons of the early medieval period include the Virgin of Vladimir (c. 1130, originally from Constantinople, now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow), the Christ Pantocrator of Sinai (c. 6th century, repainted, in the Monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai), the Virgin and Child of St. Catherine’s Monastery, and the famous icons of the Monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai, which includes some of the most important surviving icons of the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries.

The Icon in Orthodox Life

The icon is not merely a work of art but a sacred object that mediates between the human and the divine. The icon is venerated with a kiss, an act of bowing, the burning of candles and incense, and the use of holy water. The icon is carried in procession on major feasts, placed on the iconostasis of every Orthodox church, displayed in the home, and used in prayer. The Orthodox Christian home typically has an icon corner — a corner of the principal room set aside for the display of icons, often including icons of Christ, the Virgin, the patron saint, and the family saints. The icon is the focal point of the family prayer.

The icon painter in the Orthodox tradition is a sacred craftsman. The training is long and demanding: the apprentice learns to grind pigments, to prepare the panel, to apply the gesso, to sketch the composition, to apply the gold, and to paint in the canonical style. The master painter passes on the techniques and the iconographic types, and the tradition is a tightly guarded craft. The icon painter works in prayer, fasts before painting the most sacred images, and may take a special blessing from the bishop before beginning a major work. The icon painter is, in the Orthodox tradition, a zographos — a “writer of images” — rather than a painter in the modern sense.

The Icon Outside the Orthodox World

The icon tradition spread to the Latin West in the early Middle Ages, although it never took root in the same way as in the Orthodox world. The Italo-Byzantine icons produced in the southern Italian and Venetian workshops in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, the famous Crucifixion of Christ painted by Coppo di Marcovaldo in Florence in 1261, and the great Italian panel paintings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries all show the influence of the Byzantine tradition. The Western devotional panel painting tradition, which became one of the great artistic traditions of the late Middle Ages, drew heavily on the Byzantine icon, and the Western altarpiece is in many ways a development of the Byzantine icon. The icon also spread to the Slavic lands after the conversion of the Bulgars, the Serbs, and the Rus’, and the great Russian icon painters of the medieval period, of whom Theophanes the Greek and Andrei Rublev are the most famous, worked in the Byzantine tradition.