I love icons! There was a special about them on EWTN, where we were told they are referred to as being “written” as opposed to “drawn” because they are a way to teach and by which to meditate. Thanks for posting!
Saturday, February 7
Liturgical Color: Green
Today is the Memorial of St. Colette of
Corbie, virgin. She became an orphan at
13 and joined the Poor Clares, eventually
founding 17 new cloisters. Known as a
gifted mystic, St. Colette foretold her own
death in 1447. (Franciscan Calendar)
Ha! I am so gald you mentioned that. I hesitated posting that particular icon because if you look closer, it is an anti-Catholic icon: it shows the Latin Catholics outside of the boat.
But we can be generous to the Orthodox, with all their prejudices, can’t we? The icon nevertheless shows the truth in a way a text or a realistic painting can’t. We should be thinking of the Church as a boat in which individual swimmers find salvation.
I, too, love icons. They are “written” because they are more like text in this important sense. Written text can be copied; it can appear in many forms: in large letters, small letters, handwritten, chiseled in stone, spoken or sung. It is still the text of the same meaning. Something similar takes place in an icon: the iconographer can employ one style or another but it remains the same icon. While he can offer variations in style, he cannot change the composition, attitudes of the people in the icons; he especially must avoid excessive realism or depiction of passions. Contrast that with a painting. If you take any painting at all and make a copy, or change the style, — make it your own, — it will no longer be THAT painting: that Mona Lisa, that Nude Maja, that Self Portrait With the Bandaged Ear. An iconographer is not supposed to think of himself as an artist: he does not create what was not there before, he shows what exists in heaven faithfully.