Byzantine Christian Art

[Fidei Defensor]

6 hours ago, Debp said:

Yes, I could also understand the spiritual sense as well....but the spirit realm and time travel, well that's just too strange!

Some years ago I went to a Greek festival.   It was held by St. Sophia Church here in L.A.   We went inside to sit and see the church....there was so much gold leaf on absolutely everything that it about knocked my eyes out!   I thought that architecture would take away from the worship of God...my thoughts anyhow.   It was so overwhelming.

 

Lol I know you sit there and think, “are we here to worship God or hold?” Lol the icons and incense and icnonstasis do overpower the senses. I have come to appreciate some aspects of Eastern Orthodox iconography, particularly Rublev’s The Holy Trinity which depicts Genesis 18:1-11). 

[Kevin McCabe]

On 9/25/2017 at 9:24 PM, Fidei Defensor said:

The Byzantines were Eastern Romans, their capital of Byzantium was Constantinople (Instanbul) which is in Modern Day Turkey. Their style of art was gold leaf, gold columns, and golden icons. 

Christ Pantokrator (Pantocrator) made of mosaic tiles, Hagia Sophia (Church of Holy Wisdom) in Istanbul, Turkey. 

Amazing. Just so beautiful.

[Fidei Defensor]

Indeed. Byzantine architecture is gorgious. Interestingly, the Dome of the Rock Mosque on the Temple Mount, Jerusalem was designed and built by Byzantine Christians. 

[UGC]

On 9/25/2017 at 1:24 PM, Fidei Defensor said:

The Byzantines were Eastern Romans, their capital of Byzantium was Constantinople (Instanbul) which is in Modern Day Turkey. Their style of art was gold leaf, gold columns, and golden icons. 

Christ Pantokrator (Pantocrator) made of mosaic tiles, Hagia Sophia (Church of Holy Wisdom) in Istanbul, Turkey. 

 

Wow, interesting. When looking up Christian art of the past, maybe by just doing a simple image search for example, we often don't realize the stylistic differences between time periods and locations. Definitely something that stands out and shows a distinguishing aspect to their culture once you're made aware of it like with this post here. Definitely informative.

-James

[heavensflower]

I have tried drawing Jesus before, and I couldn't help but do my best to make Him look realistic and 3D, because in all my art classes and practice with drawing portraits and people, i have learned to draw faces and human figures realisticly, that's the way I draw. All of that gold and jewels would distract from the sermon, i like churches that are tastefully decorated, but not overdone.  Beautiful churches are great, but people don't need to be distracted from the Lord and the message, and the way Eastern orthodox use icons and kiss icons, well I'd say it is idol worship, the same way the Catholics use rosary beads, statues of Mary and Jesus, crucifixes, paintings that they kneel down to and kiss,  the bowing and praying to these material objects is down right idolatry. Art is meant to be admired, for beauty and decoration, to practice the talent God gives to the artist and craftsmen, to praise the Lord who is the first artist as Creator of the universe. 

[Fidei Defensor]

One of the ikons (icons) I love by Rubelev. The three beings are meant to be Father (far left, gold), Son (niddle, red and blue represnt two natures of Christ, God and Man), and Holy Spirit (far righf, green because Spirit hovered over the waters). The wings didn’t always mean angels, it can be artistic motif forcflight or heavely authority, wings represnting heaven. At the bottom of the table you see a rectangle, originally there was mirror so you saw yourself earing at the table with the Trinity! 

The painting is meant to depict when The Trinity came and ate with Abraham: 

“The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up( and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. He said, If I have found favor in your eyes,my Lord,  do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way—now that you have come to your servant.” (Genesis 18:1-5). God the Trinity appears as three men. This is not to be confused with yhe two angels (Genesis 19).  

 

 

 

[Fidei Defensor]

I find icons very alluring, there is something about them.. they are soothing to look at. 

 

[Roymond]

On 9/29/2017 at 4:55 PM, Fidei Defensor said:

ICONS 

The Byzantines invented an artform called Icons (which means image) because of command from God, "You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below." (Exodus 20:4). They took this so literally that they refuse to this day to depict Jesus or any of Saints in three dimensions via statues, and three dimensional art like busts. To this day Eastern Orthodox Christians who follow the Byzantine Rite, wither Greek or Slavonic will only use 2D Icons in their sanctuaries. The problem is the context of what LORD commands about art, "You are not to make for yourselves an idol (image of worship), or any likeness of what is in heaven above, or on earth below, or in the water under the earth." (Exodus 20:4). Idol and image of art are two different things; one is to worship a god, another is to appreciate and enjoy. 

Christ Pantocrator or Pantkrator Icon, Pantocrator is combination of words Y'WH (Yahweh) and Jehovah.

Ouch.

Pantokrator has nothing to do with either YHWH or the bad mispronunciation of that word, "Jehovah".  It's a Greek word:  παντοκράτωρ, "pan-toh-KRA-tore", which is itself built out of two words, πάντως (PAHN-tose) and κράτωρ (KRA-tore), which in English are easily translated as "all" and "ruler".  The word thus means "all-ruler", though with the connotation of "akk-powerful" since the root of κράτωρ indicates power and strength.

I'm not sure this is actually a Christ·Pantokrator icon, though.  Those usually have a gold robe where this has red, more like this:

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Though from my understanding, that patch of skin showing on the left-hand side should have a spot of a red undertunic showing: red for His blood, gold for rulership, and blue for divinity. 

The first icon image seems to mix red and gold, which would suggest victory on the Cross (I think), and notice there are two small patches of white showing?  Those indicate His sinlessness, so I really think that's a Christ triumphant from the Cross.

On 9/29/2017 at 4:55 PM, Fidei Defensor said:

You will notice that Jesus seems Mongolian or even Arab in coloring, this is because Eastern Orthodoxy had its seat, Constantinople in Turkey, so Jesus appears Turkish,
 

There were no Turks yet!  There were Anatolians, who in time -- and a lot of marrying of whoever settled the area when Rome ruled -- would become the Turks.  Jesus in the standard icon looks like a mix of Greek, Macedonian, and (As)Syrian, a mix typical of much of Asia Minor and the non-Jewish parts on the eastern Mediterranean.  But Jews of the time looked at lot like that anyway, plus it's a mix that has been found to be closest of any other in the Middle East to Jewish DNA.

trivia:  technically, the image of an icon on electronic display is not itself an icon; the "icon-ness" of an icon requires hand-painting (or at least physicality; my Orthodox contacts aren't in agreement).

[Roymond]

On 6/19/2018 at 2:07 AM, Debp said:

Thanks for the interesting information.  Yes, that is very odd that they believe icons are transmitters to other places!

"Transmitters" probably isn't a good choice of words, nor is "other places": an icon makes a mystical connection with the person depicted in the event or condition depicted, nothing more; and since icons are made of saints whose examples we may follow, there is no danger involved.

I did get a chuckle over the use of "wormhole", though; it reminded me of my older brother's description of God -- since he was a mathematician, it's a little far from the normal:  God is His own universe that is on one-to-one correspondence with this universe, thus He is equally immanent at every point in this universe; and His universe is a single point, and thus GOd is One.  I asked if the Incarnation was accomplished by wormhole.

[Roymond]

On 2/1/2020 at 11:02 AM, heavensflower said:

I have tried drawing Jesus before, and I couldn't help but do my best to make Him look realistic and 3D, because in all my art classes and practice with drawing portraits and people, i have learned to draw faces and human figures realisticly, that's the way I draw. All of that gold and jewels would distract from the sermon, i like churches that are tastefully decorated, but not overdone.  Beautiful churches are great, but people don't need to be distracted from the Lord and the message, and the way Eastern orthodox use icons and kiss icons, well I'd say it is idol worship, the same way the Catholics use rosary beads, statues of Mary and Jesus, crucifixes, paintings that they kneel down to and kiss,  the bowing and praying to these material objects is down right idolatry. Art is meant to be admired, for beauty and decoration, to practice the talent God gives to the artist and craftsmen, to praise the Lord who is the first artist as Creator of the universe. 

(emphasis mine)

No one "bows and prays to ... material objects". 

Think of bowing like saying, "I am not worthy", since no one gets an icon without having been one heck of an imitation of Christ!  It's very much like how a kid will but a poster of some sports star on his bedroom wall, because "I want to be like him!", except that it isn't really the particular saint we want to be like, it's Jesus who we want to be like -- but just as Paul said, "Be imitators of me", so we can look to these exemplars and hope/work to be imitators of them.  Another perspective is that the icons are little windows into heaven, because everyone pictured in an icon is pretty certain to be there.

Don't forget that those saints are alive and just as much part of the church as we are!  In a serious sense they're out "big sisters" and "big brothers", and we ought to look up to them.  Of course if you don't know who one is a depiction of it can be kind of like visiting the house of a college friend and finding the hallways lined with portraits of their ancestors:  you know they're part of the family, but beyond that you don't really care.  Except that comparison misses something; this is more like portraits of heroes who spent their lives helping others while continuing to fight.

And what greater purpose could art have but to point us towards Jesus and Heaven?

So please, until you look into what's really going on, how about holding back accusations of idolatry?