ICONS. — A Greek word meaning image, which has passed into common usage to denote portable paintings with sacred images from the early centuries, and generally
(from A. Grober, L'art byzantin, Paris [1922, tav. 27]) Icons – St. Eudoxia. I. in colored stones inlaid in marble (13th–14th cent., according to A. Grobar; 2nd cent., according to S. Bettini). Istanbul, Museum, from S. Maria Panachrantos.
perished with the announcement of the catastrophe. Amid such tragedy, the few surviving icons of the early centuries are almost exclusively of the Eastern type. The iconoclastic fanaticism, which between the 8th and 9th centuries persecuted portable religious painting in the Byzantine territory, wrought havoc especially on such portable works; this explains the extreme rarity of icons from the early centuries, and consequently, due to the scarcity of comparisons, the uncertainty in their dating. Added to this is the fact that such paintings, because of 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 concealed from view. The latter is the case of the famous icon of the Saviour of the Sancta Sanctorum, known as the Acheropita, whose existence is documented by the Liber Pontificalis already 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 a painted veil that also concealed its original face, it could only be examined in 1907 by Monsignor Wilpert, who, despite the ruined state of the image, concluded that it was a Roman work to be attributed to the 5th–6th century. In the icon of the Madonna of S. Maria Nuova, however, a very recent restoration, by removing the vulgar 19th-century repaintings, revealed that the 12th-century image concealed another beneath it, one of great beauty and remote antiquity, which may perhaps date back to the 4th or 5th century. The study of these two icons also provides information on 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 widely used in the 4th–6th centuries; the Acheropita, on the other hand, is painted in tempera on hemp canvas glued to a walnut panel and prepared with a light layer of white lead, and this is the technique commonly used thereafter.
In addition to these, which are the oldest surviving ones in Rome, icons with images of saints from the Museum of Kiev, brought from Sinai by Bishop Porphyrius (perhaps from the 6th century with features akin to the paintings of the Fayum), and similar ones from the Museum of Cairo, are also anterior to the iconoclastic movement; while among the many venerated in the monasteries of Mount Athos only the Panagia Portaittissa of the monastery of Iviron would, according to Kondakov, date back to the 9th century. Other famous icons in Rome are those of the Madonna della Clemenza in S. Maria in Trastevere, and the Madonna Salus Populi Romani in S. Maria Maggiore, both of very uncertain date: for the former, various dates have been proposed by critics, ranging from the 7th to the end of the 13th century; the latter, which seems to be a fragment of a full-length image, is variously attributed to the 5th, 9th, and 13th centuries, being considered in this last case, like the other, a copy of a very ancient original. Equally uncertain is the date of that entire group of icons of the Madonna attributed by a late tradition 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 Duomo; S. Maria di Pulsano near Monte S. Angelo, etc.); of all of these, however, the oldest is that of Aracoeli, to be assigned to the 10th–11th century. Among the rare icons of the
centuries up to the Baroque period, in the oldest parts it has geometric embossed ornaments, in other parts it has repoussé figures, and is enriched with enamels as well; the Nicopeia of Venice has the nimbus in enamels on a gold lamina and the frame adorned with other Byzantine enamels contemporary with the image. The technique most commonly used for the ornamentation of the backgrounds, especially in the Eastern countries, is filigree.
Among modern icons, particular mention should be made of the one donated to His Holiness Pius X by Russian Catholics on the occasion of his priestly jubilee (1908). — See plates XCIII–XCIV.