According to what canons are icons painted. Vocabulary

The icon-painting section of the XX Christmas Readings (which was not included in the program of readings last year) was held in the new church of St. Prince Alexander Nevsky in Kozhukhov on January 25th.

The section was opened by prof. SFI, Ph.D. A.M. Kopirovsky "Modern Interior Decoration of an Orthodox Church: Tradition, Stylization, New System?". The speaker proposed seven questions that allow you to better understand what the modern system of interior decoration of an Orthodox church is like. Is it in line with Scripture? Church Tradition? Worship? Temple architecture? How do its elements interact with each other? And most importantly - how does it relate to the church meeting? Is there integrity in the painting system, a single image that reveals the inner content of the faith and life of the Church?

These issues were illustrated by examples of decor in ancient and modern temples. The latter, unfortunately, lag far behind the ancients, often resembling an archaeological museum or simply a set of individual subjects that are not related to architecture, worship, or the people.

As the leader of the section, a well-known specialist in modern iconography, candidate of cultural studies I.K. Yazykov, in essence, icon painting, as well as the construction of temples, has become a secular affair. The appearance of the temple is most often determined not by the revelation of Christ and the coming Kingdom, not by the church meeting, but ... by the sponsor.

According to A.M. Kopirovsky, a formal, mechanical restoration of the classical painting system is impossible and unnecessary today, a search for new forms is necessary. The main thing that they should inherit from the system that developed in the 9th century is integrity and meaningfulness, which is possible only if icon painting is returned to the church, i.e. the birth of icon painters in the church itself.

A lively reaction was caused by the message "The role of the customer in modern icon painting" by the St. Petersburg art expert A. Trapeznikova. She spoke about the project to restore the decoration of the Naval Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Kronstadt, pointing out a number of ridiculous iconographic errors and accompanying his speech with an eloquent video sequence. What are the images of the Evangelist Mark at three different ages, the holy noble prince Andrei Bogolyubsky in apostolic robes (instead of his proper princely robes), the hand of Christ lowered down with a blessing gesture, the absence of the apostles on the icon of the Transfiguration of the Lord! The speaker also pointed out the low artistic and technological level of images. The project caused in the audience at the same time bewilderment, laughter and regret.

The reports also touched upon the problems of creating new murals and icons in churches (D. Kuntsevich, Minsk), decorative carving and recreating the ancient form of the altar barrier (A. Zharov, Minsk) and others. More details about the work of the icon-painting section and especially the interesting discussion in connection with it can be found on the website

The icon is painted according to special rules, which are obligatory for the icon painter. The totality of certain icon painting techniques, according to which an image is built on an icon board, is called icon-painting canon.

Vision gives a person almost 80% of information about the world around him. And therefore, realizing the importance of painting for the holy cause of the gospel, already in the early Christian church attempts began to create their own language of sacred images, different from the surrounding pagan and Jewish world.

Icon-painting rules were created over a long period of time not only by icon painters, or, as they used to say, iconographers, but also by the Church Fathers. These rules, especially those that did not relate to the technique of execution, but to the theology of the image, were convincing arguments in the struggle of the Church against numerous heresies. Arguments, of course, in lines and colors.

In 691, the Fifth-Sixth, or Trullsky, Cathedral took place, so named because it was held in the hall of the imperial palace - Trullum. At this council, important additions were made to the decisions of the Fifth and Sixth Councils, as well as some decisions that were very significant for the formation of Orthodox icon painting.

In Canons 73, 82 and 100, the Church begins the development of canons, which become a kind of shield against the penetration of pictorial heresy into the Orthodox icon.

And the Seventh Ecumenical Council, held in 787, approved the dogma of icon veneration, designated the place and role of sacred images in liturgical church practice. Thus, it can be said that the entire Church of Christ, her entire conciliar mind, participated in the development of canonical icon-painting rules.

The canon for the icon painter was the same as the liturgical charter for the clergyman. Continuing the service charter for a clergyman. Continuing this comparison, we can say that the service for the isographer becomes icon-painting original.

An icon-painting original is a set of specific rules and recommendations that teaches how to paint an icon, and the main attention is paid not to theory, but to practice.

Obviously, the very first established role models existed already in the initial period of the formation of canonical icon painting. One of the earliest icon-painting originals that has come down to the present day, which is based, of course, on even earlier ones, is considered to be a passage written in Greek from the Antiquities of Church History by Ulpius the Roman on the Appearance of the God-bearing Fathers, dated 993. It contains verbal descriptions of the most famous Church Fathers. Here, for example, is a description of St. John Chrysostom: “John of Antioch was very small in stature, had a large head on his shoulders, and was extremely thin. open and large, pitted with many wrinkles, large ears, a small, very sparse, adorned with a gray beard.

There are originals, which, in addition to purely verbal descriptions, also contain picturesque images of saints. They are called facial. Here it is necessary to recall the Menologion of Emperor Basil II, compiled at the end of the 10th century. The book, in addition to the biographies of the saints, also contains 430 colored miniatures, which served as authoritative models for icon painters.

The front original, or as it is also called - sample, personal, spread among icon painters in various editions. You can call "Stroganov" and "Bolshakovsky originals", "Guryanovsky", "Siysky" and others. A book compiled in the 18th century by the hieromonk and painter Dionysius Fournoagrofiot, under the title "Erminia, or instruction in the art of painting", became widely known.

So, the isograph worked in a rather rigid canonical framework. But wasn't the canon something that fettered the icon painter, hindered him? This question is most typical for people familiar with the history of fine arts, because secular art history builds the problem in this way: the canon is a brake, liberation from it is the artist’s creative freedom of expression: from Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna” to Malevich’s “Black Square”.

One of the contemporary researchers of the icon, academician Rauschenbakh, very emotionally and figuratively expressed his opinion about the result of the rejection of any canonical framework in the visual arts: "... Medieval art is in many respects higher than the art of the Renaissance. I believe that The Renaissance was not only a movement forward, it was also connected with losses. Abstract art is a complete decline. The pinnacle for me is the icon of the 15th century ... From the point of view of psychology, I can explain it this way: medieval art appeals to reason, the art of the New Age and the Renaissance - to the senses, and the abstract to the subconscious. This is a clear movement from man to ape."

This is the path followed by the iconography of the Western Roman Church. Along the path of destroying the canon, along the path of admiring bodily, emotional beauty - the beauty against which the 100th canon of the already mentioned Trullo Cathedral was directed: Therefore, images on disks or on anything else that is imagined, charming the eye, corrupting the mind and inflaming impure pleasures, we do not allow from now on to be inscribed in any way.

According to Archimandrite Raphael (Karelin), the author of an interesting essay "On the Language of Orthodox Icons", the canon is "a centuries-old precious experience of the entire Eastern Church, the experience of spiritual vision and its transformation into a visual image. The canon does not fetter the icon painter, but gives him freedom. From From doubts, from the danger of a gap between content and form, from what we would call "a lie against a saint. The Canon gives freedom to the form itself..."

Earlier it was mentioned that for previous generations who were born and lived in an Orthodox environment, the language of the icon was quite accessible, because this language is understandable only for people who know the Holy Scriptures, the rites of worship and participate in the Sacraments. For a modern person, especially one who has recently come to the Church, this is much more difficult to achieve. The difficulty also lies in the fact that since the 18th century, the canonical icon has been replaced by icons of the so-called "academic" writing - in fact, paintings on religious themes. This style of icon painting, which is characterized by frank admiration for the beauty of forms, emphasized decorativeness and pomp of the decoration of the icon board, came to Russia from the Catholic West and was especially developed in the post-Petrine period, during the synodal period in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church.

This period began with a special decree of Peter I, in which he abolished the Patriarchate in Russia, and appointed an official, the chief prosecutor, who led the leadership of the Holy Synod, as the manager of all the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church. The patriarchate was restored only at the Local Council of 1917-1918.

Of course, the political and economic reorientation of the entire life of the Russian state, actively initiated by Peter and supported by subsequent rulers, could not but affect the spiritual life of all strata of society. This also applies to iconography.

At the present time, despite the fact that modern icon painters are reviving the traditions of ancient Russian writing, in many churches, for the most part, you can see images in the "academic" style.

In any case, an icon is always a shrine, no matter how pictorially it is executed. The main thing is to always feel the degree of responsibility of the icon painter for his work to the one he depicts: the image must be worthy of the Prototype.

"Encyclopedia of the Orthodox Icon. Fundamentals of the Theology of the Icon".

Icon as a word is of Greek origin and means in direct translation - "image". Byzantium is considered the birthplace of the icon, it was from there that this “image” got to.

Interestingly, in the early Christian tradition there was no rule to create man-made images of the Almighty. This was explained by one of the commandments of the Old Testament, which forbids "making an idol", as well as a direct connection of such images with pagan worship. The former completely denied any possibility of depicting God, this tradition still remains in others (Islam, Judaism).

Meanwhile, under these conditions, it was considered acceptable to use appropriate symbols that “remind” believers of the basic ideas and images of Christianity, which, however, remained only understandable to them. So, in the catacombs that served the first Christians, the walls were decorated with special images, among which there were, for example, symbols:

• Baskets with loaves that stand on fish are a symbol of the miracle of multiplying loaves and feeding a thousand people with 5 loaves and two fish
• The vine - as the Lord's planting
• Dove, ship, etc.

Gradually, images of God as an anthropomorphic (i.e., human-like) image also begin to appear. Together with them, an intellectual dispute and struggle arises and intensifies, which have received the name of the process of clash between iconodules and iconoclasts. Historically, this is the period of the 8th-9th centuries, when the ban on the veneration of icons was formalized first by the secular authorities (Byzantine emperor Leo III), and then by the church (Sobor 754).

As a result of this struggle, icon veneration was also officially permitted by the authority of the Council of 843. This was not done “from scratch”, by that time the theologians of Byzantium had managed to develop a whole harmonious system, which was included in the corresponding theory of the icon. Among these titans of thought are Theodore the Studite, John of Damascus, who are now the "fathers of the church."

Christian icon theory

The icon as an image of God was recognized as a symbol and declared an intermediary between man and the world of the invisible.

The images had their own hierarchy:

• God is a prototype
• Logos (as the realized word of God) - the second type of images
• Man is the third kind

The main question - how can you depict the invisible God? According to legend, we know that God appeared to the elders, the prophets as heavenly light, a burning bush, or in the form of three travelers. This is an Old Testament tradition. In the New Testament history, we know another image of God - this is the Son of the Lord, who appeared in the world in the form of a man. It was this image that was allowed to be used in icons, when the supernatural, heavenly, divine appears before us through the embodied human. That is, the permission to venerate icons was based on the main dogma of the incarnation of Christ.

God the Father himself was never portrayed by Byzantine icon painters, but in the European part and in Russia there were icons where the first person of the Trinity could be represented by a gray-haired elder.

Nevertheless, it was in Byzantium by the 10th century that the symbolism of the icon, its genres, and types of iconography began to take shape.

Canon of Christian Icon

Canonicality can be called the main feature or feature of the icon. Since this image was to be used in church practice and to connect a person with God, everything in it had to be subject to uniform “rules”, i.e. canon. This canon was determined primarily by the theological content component, and only then by aesthetics. Image composition, icon shapes, color, accessories, etc. were conditioned by dogma, which made them understandable to all believers.

Such canonical provisions did not appear directly with the advent of Christianity, on the contrary, the cultures of antiquity knew about them in one way or another. The art of Egypt was characterized by a high level of canonicity; the canon was also present in ancient culture, but on a smaller scale.

In Christian culture, the canon also provided a sufficient average level of icon performance, the image samples were verified, selected and available, nothing had to be “invented” or “author's” developed, since there were already stable models of iconographic images. Among other things, in the Middle Ages, the master did not even sign the work, all the icons were created by "anonymous".

The iconographic canon extended to the following elements:

The plot and composition of the image on the icon

The plot of the icon corresponded to Scripture, the choice of the content element was left to the church. To implement this or that order, the icon painter had samples, cuts and the so-called "Explanatory originals", in which the entire image was already presented and set. It was by these plot-compositional “standards” that believers recognized the icon and could distinguish them in essence.

Interestingly, in Russia, already from the 12th century, the Byzantine canon begins to undergo, when stable types of iconography “modify” or even new ones appear, due to local traditions. This is how the canon of the Protection of the Mother of God, for example, or icons with images of saints of a certain area arose.

The figure on the icon

Canonically, the image of the figure was also strictly “regulated”. So, the main (or semantically main) figure should have been located frontally, i.e. facing the believer. She was given motionless and large. Such a figure was the "center" of the icon. Less significant figures in this story were presented in profile, they were characterized by movement, complex posture, etc. If a person was present on the icon, then he was depicted as an elongated figure with an emphasis on his head. If it was a person's face, then the upper part of the face stood out in it with an emphasis on the eyes and forehead. In this way, the predominance of the spiritual over the sensual was emphasized. In contrast, the person's mouth was drawn incorporeal, the nose was thin, and the chin was small. In the images of saints, their name was written next to the face.

Color in Russian iconography

The symbolism of color in the images of icons is also strictly canonical. Meanwhile, the Russian tradition of iconography is characterized by an unusually bright and rich palette and color scheme.

The Byzantine tradition is inherent in the essential supremacy of the golden color, which was supposed to reflect the divine light itself. In such icons, both the background and important details of the image - halos, a cross, etc. were covered with gold. On the Russian icon, gold will be replaced with paints, and purple, which is very significant in Byzantium (the power of the emperor), will not be used at all.

The red color on our icons will be most widely used in the Novgorod school, where the background will be covered with red, replacing Byzantine gold with it. In terms of content, it will symbolize the color of the Redeemer's blood, the flame of life.

For the white color, the meaning of divine light, innocence was prescribed; it was used in the clothes of both Christ and the righteous, saints.

For black - the meaningful load was determined by the symbols of death, hell; in general, it was used very rarely and, if necessary, could be replaced by dark tones of blue or brown.

Green - was the color of the earth (prevailed in the Pskov school of icon painting), this color seemed to be opposed to heavenly or royal.

Blue is the symbolism of heaven, eternity, had the meaning of truth. Both the Savior and the Mother of God could be dressed in blue robes.

Space in an icon

The arrangement of the figures and the construction of the image space itself is another important component of the canon. Today we know about three types of planar representation of space available in art. These are the perspectives:

• straight line (concentric space). Characteristic of the Renaissance period, expresses the active position and point of view of the artist
• parallel (static space). The image is located along the canvas, typical of Eastern art and Ancient Greece
• inverse (eccentric space). Chosen as canonical for icon painting

This perspective reflected the essence of dogmatic provisions, when the icon was understood not as a window into the real world, like a Renaissance painting, but as a way of “manifesting” the heavenly world. Here, the artist does not look at what he depicts, but the character of the icon looks at the believer. The very space in it is symbolic:

• a hill can represent a mountain,
• a bush - a whole forest,
• bulbs of churches - the whole city.

An icon can thus have a vertical that connects earth and sky; so in the lower part of the image is given the mobile, changeable, human, and in the upper part - eternity, the heavenly world.

Genres of Russian icon painting

• Genesis letter
• parables
• Honest icons (this “section” will appear in icon painting a little later)

Based on these definitions, genre features are also formed, among which the most significant are:

Historical-legendary

Those. based on Genesis writing and reproducing scenes of events from Sacred History.

This genre of Russian icon painting is characterized by: narrative ("church alphabet" for illiterate believers), many details, vitality and mobility.

Symbolic-dogmatic

Those. based on "parables".

They are characterized by: the severity of the composition, the rigidity of binding to dogmatics, the abstractness of the figures, and the almost plotlessness. The main emphasis is symbolism and canonical semantic elements. Example - "Oranta", "Eucharist",.

Personal or "honest"

Those. written in honor of a certain character - a saint, an apostle.

The features of this genre of icon painting are the frontality of the face and figure, the abstractness of the background. The image itself can be half-length or full-length, the life of a saint may also be present (the face is bordered by fragments (brands) with plot content from his life).

Genre of the Theotokos cycle

This is a special genre of Russian icon painting, in which all three genre elements listed above merge into a single whole. The faces of the Mother of God with the Child narrate both about certain historical events and affirm specific Christian dogmas (the incarnation, salvation, sacrifice) and carry a huge symbolic load.

The iconography of the Mother of God in Russia is one of the most revered and beloved genres. The iconography of the Blessed Virgin has several types of images of its own, which we will discuss separately. In a separate text, we will consider both the history of Russian icon painting and its school.

Sometimes images of saints on ancient Russian frescoes or mosaics are called icons. This, of course, is wrong. But the figures on the frescoes and icons are really similar. This is because in ancient Russian painting there were strict rules, or canons, on how to depict saints and biblical subjects, the same for icons, frescoes and mosaics.

The basis for the emergence of Russian painting was the samples of Byzantine art. It was from there that the canons came to Russia.

King Abgar receives from the Apostle Thaddeus the Image of Christ Not Made by Hands.
Folding sash (X century).

For the perception of icon painting by a modern viewer, it is important to remember that an icon is a very complex work in terms of its internal organization, artistic language, no less complex than, for example, a painting of the Renaissance. However, the icon painter thought in completely different categories, followed a different aesthetics.

What is an iconographic canon?

After a difficult period of iconoclasm, the paintings of churches in Byzantium were brought into a single, orderly system. All the dogmas and rites of the Greco-Eastern Church were fully formed and were recognized as divinely inspired and unchangeable. Church art had to adhere to certain schemes of basic compositions, the totality of which is usually called the "iconographic canon".

Canon - a set of strictly established rules and techniques for works of art of this type.

The goal of Byzantine art was not to depict the surrounding world, but to display by artistic means the supernatural world, the existence of which Christianity claimed. Hence the main canonical requirements for iconography:

• the images on the icons should emphasize their spiritual, unearthly, supernatural character, which was achieved by a peculiar interpretation of the head and face of the figure. Spirituality, calm contemplation and inner grandeur came to the fore in the image;
• since the supernatural world is an eternal, unchanging world, the figures of biblical characters and saints on the icon should be depicted as motionless, static;
• the icon made specific demands on the display of space and time.

The Byzantine iconographic canon regulated the range of compositions and plots of scripture, the depiction of the proportions of figures, the general type and general facial expression of the saints, the type of appearance of individual saints and their postures, the palette of colors and the technique of painting.

Where did the samples come from, which the icon painter was obliged to imitate?
There were primary sources, such icons are called "primordial".
Each "primordial" icon -
the result of religious insight, visions.
The icon "Christ the Pantocrator" from the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Athos
made in the encaustic technique.
It was created in the VI century - long before the formation of the canon.
But for 14 centuries Christ the Pantocrator
basically write it that way.

How saints were depicted on icons

Thanks to the work of John of Damascus, it became clear what can be depicted on the icon and what cannot. It remains to find out and regulate how the appearance of saints and divine subjects should be depicted.

The basis of the iconographic canon was the idea of ​​the truth of what was depicted. If the gospel events were real, they should have been portrayed as they happened. But the books of the New Testament are extremely sparing in describing the setting of certain scenes, usually the evangelists give only a list of the actions of the characters, omitting the characteristics of appearance, clothing, scenes, and the like. Therefore, along with canonical texts, canonical schemes for depicting various sacred plots were formed, which became the basis for the icon painter.

For example, saints, archangels, the Virgin Mary and Christ should be drawn strictly in front or in three quarters, with wide eyes fixed on the believer.

To enhance the effect, some masters painted the eyes in such a way that they seemed to be following the person, no matter from which side he looked at the icon.

Iconography prescribed how to convey the appearance of various saints. For example, St. John Chrysostom was supposed to be portrayed as fair-haired and short-bearded, while St. Basil the Great was depicted as a dark-haired man with a long, pointed beard. Thanks to this, the figures of the saints were easily recognizable even at a great distance, when the accompanying inscriptions were not visible.

"Sergius and Bacchus", VI century (State Museum of Western and Oriental Art, Kyiv).
This one of the early Byzantine icons depicts the holy martyrs, especially
revered in Constantinople. The attention of the audience will certainly be attracted by their gaze,
transmitted through unnaturally large, wide-open eyes.
In these images, spiritual concentration and detachment from the outside world are especially emphasized.

Known since ancient times, the proportions of the human body are deliberately violated: the figures rush up, become taller, thinner, the shoulders narrow, fingers and nails lengthen. The whole body, except for the face and hands, is hidden under the folds of clothing. The oval of the face is lengthened, the forehead is written high, the nose and mouth are small, the eyes are large, almond-shaped. The look is strict and detached, the saints look past the viewer or through him. To make the characters of the icon look incorporeal, like angels, Byzantine masters made them flat, practically reduced to simple silhouettes.

Color palette

Primary colors had a symbolic meaning set forth in the 6th century treatise On the Heavenly Hierarchy. For example, the background of an icon (it was also called "light"), symbolizing one or another divine essence, could be gold, that is, it meant Divine light, white - this is the purity of Christ and the radiance of his Divine glory, the green background symbolized youth and vigor, red - a sign of the imperial dignity, as well as the color of purple, the blood of Christ and the martyrs. The empty space of the background is filled with inscriptions - the name of the saint, the words of divine scripture.

There was a rejection of a multifaceted landscape or architectural background, which gradually turned into a kind of signs of an architectural landscape or landscape, and often completely gave way to a pure monophonic plane.

Icon painters also abandoned halftones, color transitions, reflections of one color in another. The planes were painted over locally: the red cloak was painted exclusively with cinnabar (the so-called paint containing all shades of red), the yellow slide was painted with yellow ocher.

Gregory the Wonderworker, second half of the 12th century.
A brilliant example of a Byzantine icon from that period
(State Hermitage, St. Petersburg).

Since the background of the icon was painted with the same intensity, even the minimal three-dimensionality of the figures, which the new painting allowed, could not reveal chiaroscuro. Therefore, in order to show the most convex point of the image, it was highlighted: for example, in the face, the tip of the nose, cheekbones, superciliary arches were painted with the lightest colors. A special technique arose for sequentially superimposing lighter layers of paint on top of each other, while the lightest one turned out to be just that very convex point of the surface, regardless of its location.

The paints themselves also became different: encaustic (in this painting technique the binder of paints is wax) was replaced by tempera (water-borne paints prepared on the basis of dry powder pigments).

"Reverse" perspective

There have also been changes in the relationship of the characters depicted on the icon with each other and with the viewer. The spectator was replaced by a worshiper, who did not contemplate the work of painting, but stood before his Heavenly Intercessor. The image was directed at the person standing in front of the icon, which influenced the change of perspective systems.

Annunciation (late 12th century, Sinai). The golden background in Christian symbolism meant Divine light.
The shimmering gilding gave the impression of intangibility,
the immersion of the figures in a certain mystical space, reminiscent of the radiance of the skies of the mountain world.
Moreover, this golden radiance excluded any other source of light.
And if the sun or a candle were depicted on the icon, they did not affect the illumination of other objects,
therefore Byzantine painters did not use chiaroscuro.

The linear perspective of antiquity ("direct" perspective), which created the illusion of "depth" of the depicted space, was lost. Its place was taken by the so-called "reverse" perspective: the lines converged not behind the plane of the icon, but in front of it - as if in the eyes of the viewer, in his real world.

The image seemed to be overturned, aimed at the viewer, the viewer was included in the system of the painting, and did not look into it, like a random passerby through someone else's window.

In addition to the “turn-on effect”, reverse perspective also contributed to the flattening of three-dimensional objects - they seemed to spread out on the surface of a painted wall or board. Forms became stylized, freed from "unnecessary" details. Now the artist did not write the object itself, but, as it were, the idea of ​​​​the object. At a five-domed temple, for example, all five domes lined up in a straight line, without taking into account the fact that in reality two domes would be obscured. The table should have four legs, even though the back legs are not visible. The object on the icon should be revealed to the person in its entirety, as it is accessible to the Divine Eye.

Time display features

The transfer of time in the space of the icon also has its own characteristics. The saint, whom the prayer is looking at, is generally out of time, because he lives in another world. But the plots of his earthly life unfold both in time and in space: the hagiographic icons show the birth of the future saint, his baptism, education, sometimes travels, sometimes suffering, miracles, burial and transfer of relics. A form of unification of the temporal and the eternal has become a hagiographic icon with hallmarks - small pictures that form a frame around the large figure of the saint.

Saint Panteleimon in his life. (XIII century, the monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai).

And yet, space and time on the Byzantine icon are rather arbitrary. For example, in the execution scene, an executioner can be depicted, who raised his sword over the martyr who bowed his head, and right next to it is a severed head lying on the ground. Often the more important characters are larger than the rest or are repeated several times in the same image.

Rigid limits or freedom of creativity?

On the one hand, the iconographic canon limited the freedom of the artist: he could not freely build a composition and even choose colors at his own discretion. On the other hand, the canon disciplined the painter, forcing me to pay careful attention to detail. The rigid framework in which the Byzantine icon painters were placed forced the masters to improve within these boundaries - to change the shades of color, the details of the compositions, the rhythmic solution of the scenes.

Thanks to this system of conventions, the language of Byzantine painting arose, well understood by all believers. At that time, many could not read, but the language of symbols was instilled in any believer from childhood. And the symbolism of color, gestures, depicted objects - this is the language of the icon.

Our Lady of Vladimir (the beginning of the 12th century, the State Tretyakov Gallery), brought to Russia from Constantinople in 1155, is rightfully considered a masterpiece of Byzantine icon painting. Icons of this type received in Russia the name "Tenderness" (in Greek, Eleusa). A distinctive feature of this image is that the left leg of the Infant Jesus is bent in such a way
that the sole of the foot is visible.

Canonical requirements entered the system of artistic means of Byzantine art, thanks to which it achieved such refinement and perfection. These icons no longer caused reproaches in paganism and idolatry. It turns out that the years of iconoclasm were not in vain - they contributed to intense reflection on the essence of the sacred image and the forms of church painting, and ultimately - on the creation of a new type of art.