From its beginnings, the church used imagery to inform and delight the faithful. Pictures taught the Gospel to the illiterate, (most of the population) and brought beautiful sanctity into spaces that might not be so recognized otherwise. There are images found in both the burial catacombs of Rome, and private houses where the believers were forced to meet during the three centuries Christianity was outlawed in the Roman Empire. When Christianity became the official religion of the empire, vast sums were spent by the Imperial Court to build churches impressive enough to convert more and more people to the faith. Often the buildings were grand in size and proportions, having thick free-standing walls of masonry which held up vaults and domes. All this interior was covered in imagery, from the apex of the dome to the floor.
The walls and vaults and domes were covered with mosaics. Standing on the floor or attached to screens and doors were icons painted in encaustic (hot wax) on wooden panels. These media were chosen to dazzle and bring transfigured light into the dark church spaces.
Take a moment and imagine being a poor peasant coming into such a space from the scorching heat and blinding light of a Mediterranean morning. Immediately you would notice is that it’s twenty degrees cooler inside, and the air is perfumed with incense. Then you realize you can’t see – your eyes haven’t acclimated yet to the dark. As they do, you see beams of colored light streaming down from a great height, see sparkles twinkling along the vault and walls, and perceive life-size figures (on the panels) glowing in the dark – all looking straight at you. You don’t feel threatened, as soft voices chant in the next room, and there is an all-pervasive sense of peace and beauty to the place. All was engineered to bring home the realization that when you entered these holy spaces, you entered another world – one of strength and beauty and peace and safety.
Unfortunately, when Islam started its rapid rise, the church fathers – and the emperor- panicked, and believing that God was punishing them for using imagery (banned in Mosques as well as Jewish temples) in the churches, ripped all the imagery from them. Almost all the icons and mosaics were destroyed, and the churches remained without for over 120 years. But they were sorely missed, and in the 9th century, the edict was reversed and churches again blossomed with imagery. Now, however, great pains were taken to make them less likely to burn, or be able to be chipped away, by changing the media used. Egg tempera replaced encaustic and frescoes replaced mosaics. Also rules were introduced to make sure that no one would think that these were images of earthly beings, and thus, potential idols. These figures and scenes were painted in a way to appear transfigured by God, to be “windows into heaven.” Distortions, reverse perspective, two-dimensionality and so forth are ways to make the depictions “not natural.”
Although every artist has to follow the rules, there are differences between the different schools iconography, determined in large part by the area which produced the works. The Cretan icons use a lot of chiaroscuro, for instance, while the Russians go in for distortion (usually elongation) of forms. Certain iconographers stand out- Andrei Rublev, for instance, was of such stature that the Russian church has declared him a saint. But most icons are unsigned because it’s the message that’s important, not the artist.
The influence of the West is discernible in eighteenth and nineteenth century icons, but in the last half of the twentieth century there was a turning back to the traditional rules. Recently there has been a great interest in icons even in the non-orthodox churches. Although the lavishness of previous centuries is seldom seen today, icons are used in the liturgy and found in many private homes.