Icons

ICONS. - A Greek word meaning image, which has come into use to indicate portable paintings with sacred images from the early centuries, and generally those of the Eastern type. The iconoclastic fanaticism that between the 8th and 9th centuries persecuted religious painting in Byzantine territory wrought havoc especially upon portable paintings; this explains the extreme rarity of the icons of the early centuries and, consequently, given the scarcity of comparisons, the uncertainty in their dating. Add to this that research is also hampered by the fact that such paintings, owing to the very veneration in which they were held, often underwent repainting or reworking to keep them serviceable for worship; and at other times they were almost entirely hidden from view. The latter is the case of the famous icon of the Savior of the Sancta Sanctorum, called the Acheropita, whose existence is already documented in the Liber Pontificalis in the time of Stephen II (752-757): completely hidden at the end of the 12th century by a covering of gilded silver leaf and by a painted veil that also concealed its original face, it could be examined only in 1907 by Monsignor Wilpert who, despite the ruinous state of the image, reached the conclusion that it is a Roman work to be attributed to the 5th-6th century. In the icon of the Madonna of S. Maria Nuova, on the other hand, a very recent restoration, removing the crude 19th-century repaintings, revealed that the 12th-century image concealed another, most precious for beauty and for remote antiquity, which may perhaps go back to the 4th or 5th century. The study of these two icons also gives information about the technique with which they were executed: the icon of S. Maria Nuova is in wax (v. ENCAUSTIC) on linen canvas, according to a technique that seems to have been much in use in the 4th-6th centuries; the Acheropita, on the other hand, is painted in tempera on hemp canvas glued onto a walnut panel and prepared with a light layer of white lead, and this is the technique commonly used thereafter.

Besides these, which are the oldest surviving in Rome, also earlier than the iconoclastic movement are the icons with images of saints in the Kiev Museum, brought from Sinai by Bishop Porfirio (perhaps of the 6th century, with characteristics akin to the paintings of Fayoum), and the similar ones in the Cairo Museum; while among the many venerated in the monasteries of Mount Athos only the Panagia Portaitissa of the monastery of Iviron would go back, according to Kondakov, to the 9th century. Other famous icons in Rome are those of the Madonna della Clemenza in S. Maria in Trastevere, and of the Madonna Salus Populi Romani in S. Maria Maggiore, both of very uncertain date: for the first, criticism has proposed various datings, between the 7th century and the end of the 13th; the second, which seems to be a fragment of a full-length image, is variously attributed to the 5th, 9th and 13th centuries, considering it in the latter case, like the other, a copy of a very ancient original. Equally uncertain is the date of that whole group of icons of the Madonna that a late tradition attributes to St. Luke, in Rome (S. Maria d'Aracoeli, S. Maria in Via Lata, S. Maria della Pace, S. Agostino, S. Maria del Popolo, etc.) and in other places in Italy (Bologna, sanctuary of S. Luca; Bari, crypt of the Cathedral; S. Maria di Pulsano near Monte S. Angelo, etc.); of all of them, however, the oldest is that of the Aracoeli, to be assigned to the 10th-11th century. Among the rare icons of the 10th century are also the much-venerated Madonna Nicopeia in S. Marco in Venice, coming from Constantinople, and the portable mosaic with the Pantocrator in the National Museum of Florence, formed of very tiny tesserae set in wax, according to a technique fairly widespread in this period, and of which examples are preserved even of rather large dimensions in the monasteries of Chilandari and Xenophon on Mount Athos; a notable example of such mosaic icons is that with the 12 feasts of the year, in the Museum of the Opera del Duomo in Florence, of the 12th century. More frequent are naturally the icons attributable to this century (one recalls, besides the most cited ones of Rome, the Madonna called of S. Guglielmo at Montevergine; the Madonna della Madia at Monopoli; the Madonna of the Collegiata of Mercatello, etc.). It is no longer appropriate, however, to give the name of icons to the images painted in Italy in the following century, when our painting increasingly detaches itself from Byzantine manners; while in Russia and the Balkan countries, where Byzantine art continued to dominate unchallenged, the history of icons is identified with the history of local painting (v. BYZANTINE, ART; RUSSIA, art). In this regard, the group of ancient Eastern paintings, among which many Russian ones, currently preserved in the collections of the Pinacoteca and the Sacred Museum of the Vatican Library, is also of particular interest. In some areas of Italy that maintained closer ties with the East, in the South and in Venice, Greek painters worked who, almost entirely apart from local artistic movements, continued the Byzantine technique, remaining faithful to the original technique and spirit. Particularly in Venice, from the end of the 15th century, there was a colony of Cretan painters that was widely active until the middle of the 18th century, and of whom very numerous icons remain at the scuola of S. Niccolò, where the community of the Greeks still has its seat; the best known among these Veneto-Cretan icons are Michele Damaskinos and Emanuele Zanfurnari, both of the end of the 16th century.

In these later icons the covering of silver leaf becomes very frequent (already in use in the 12th century, as was seen in the Acheropita of the Sancta Sanctorum), which sometimes covers the background, sometimes also part of the image, of which it leaves only the face visible. The minor arts contributed to making the most venerated icons resplendent with such coverings and with other ornaments. The silver leaf that covers the Acheropita, and which underwent restorations in various periods up to the Baroque age, has in its oldest parts geometric ornaments beaten within molds, in other parts it has figures in relief, and is also enriched with enamels; the Nicopeia of Venice has the halo in enamels on gold leaf and the frame adorned with other Byzantine enamels contemporary with the image. The technique most commonly used for the ornamentation of backgrounds, especially in the countries of the East, is filigree.

Among modern icons, particular mention deserves that donated to His Holiness Pius X by Russian Catholics on the occasion of his priestly jubilee (1908). - See plates XCIII-XCIV.

Emma Zocca