ICONOGRAPHY – THE DIVINE IMAGE
Iconography has a great significance in Sacred Art, especially in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Roman Catholic, and certain Eastern Catholic churches. As the 7th Ecumenical Council proclaimed:
“Icons are in colors what the Scripture are in words: witnesses to the Incarnation, the fact that God has come among us as a person whom we can see, touch and hear, to offer us the new life and begin the new creation.”
The icon promotes a spiritual link between the human and divine. It bonds the material to the spiritual through the senses, provided one stands before the icon with the correct disposition of heart and mind. A quote from St. Basil the Great:
“What the word transmits through the ear, the painting silently shows through the image, and by these two means, mutually accompanying one another… we receive knowledge of one and the same thing.”
MORE FROM THE EPIPHANIES OF BEAUTY
“Beauty is the vocation bestowed on the artist by the Creator in the gift of artistic talent.”
“The gifts you have received are for each one of you a responsibility and a mission.”
“Artists who are conscious of all this know too that they must labour without allowing themselves to be driven by the search for empty glory or the craving for cheap popularity, and still less by the calculation of some possible profit for themselves. ”
“I invite you to cherish beauty, and beauty will heal the many wounds that mark the hearts and souls of the men and women of our day.”
“The purpose of art is nothing less than the upliftment of the human spirit. ”
“Those who perceive in themselves… the artistic vocation as poet, writer, sculptor, painter, musician, and actor feel at the same time an obligation not to waste this talent but to develop it, in order to put it to service of their neighbour and the humanity as a whole. ”