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.
You know, i didn’t take umbrage at the Latin part at all: in fact, I read the whole picture as what Christians of all belief systems will have to endure in the end times. I used to get a catalog from a place where the icons are drawn. They were beautiful! The Crucifixion with the bones of Adam beneath the Cross; Our Lady of Perpetual Help, with Jesus’ little sandal. I see what you mean. Even changing the way Our Lady’s eyes looked would alter part of the meaning. Thanks again for sharing that with us! God bless you!