What Is an Icon? An Image Treated as a Window Rather Than a Picture

The theological position developed in the Eastern Christian tradition holds that an image participates in what it depicts without being identical to it, so honour paid to the image passes to the person represented rather than stopping at the wood and paint. That distinction, between veneration directed through an object and worship directed at it, is the hinge of the entire argument and was formalised precisely because the charge of idolatry had to be answered. The justification offered rests on incarnation, since a tradition holding that the divine took visible human form cannot consistently say that the divine is unrepresentable, which is why the dispute about images became a dispute about the nature of Christ. The practical consequence is that these objects are treated differently from pictures, being blessed, processed, kissed, credited with intervention and in some cases regarded as having their own histories.

Production is governed by convention to a degree unusual in art, and the constraints are the point:

• •Established compositions are repeated rather than invented, since the image is understood to be received rather than designed
• •Figures are shown frontally with large eyes and elongated features, which is a deliberate departure from naturalism
• •Perspective is reversed or absent, so lines diverge towards the viewer rather than receding, placing the viewer inside rather than outside
• •Gold ground replaces any setting, removing the figure from ordinary space and time
• •Egg tempera on prepared wood panel is the traditional technique, applied in translucent layers
• •The painter works within a tradition and frequently prays while working, with the act treated as a religious practice rather than a creative one

The status of religious images produced open conflict more than once. The Byzantine controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries saw imperial policy swing between destruction and restoration across more than a century, with monasteries suppressed, theologians exiled and an enormous quantity of earlier material destroyed, which is why so little pre-controversy work survives. The arguments were substantive, turning on the second commandment, on whether the divine can be circumscribed, and on whether the practice had become worship in fact whatever it was in theory. The Protestant Reformation reopened the question in the West, producing further waves of destruction across northern Europe in which sculpture, glass and painting were removed from churches, sometimes by authorities and sometimes by crowds. Islamic and Jewish traditions resolved the question differently by developing non-figurative religious art of extraordinary sophistication, which is a positive response rather than an absence.

Comparable practices exist well outside the Christian tradition and the comparisons are instructive rather than tidy. Hindu practice involves the consecration of an image through a ritual that invites the deity to be present in it, after which the image is bathed, dressed, fed and put to rest, and the theological account of what is happening differs substantially from the Christian one while the practical treatment overlaps. Buddhist traditions treat images with comparable care and have their own long-running arguments about what is being honoured. Ancestral images, masks and objects across many traditions carry presence rather than representation. The cross-cultural pattern is that objects treated as points of contact are extremely common and that the theological explanations attached to them vary enormously, which suggests the practice is not downstream of the doctrine. Outside observers have consistently misdescribed these practices as worship of objects, which the participants consistently deny.

The objects sit awkwardly in museums, which is worth noticing. An image made to be venerated in a church, lit by candles and kissed by generations, is displayed under controlled light behind glass and labelled with a date and a region, which preserves the object and removes the function that explains everything about how it was made. Visitors frequently find them stiff or repetitive, which follows directly from judging by criteria the tradition rejected, since originality and naturalism were not being attempted. Some communities continue to use them as intended and object to the display of objects still regarded as living. Conservation raises its own questions, since cleaning can remove the accumulated traces of use that are part of the object's history. The general point applies well beyond this case, since a great many things in museums were made to be used rather than to be looked at.

The claim is that honour paid to the image passes through to the person depicted, which is veneration rather than worship, and the justification rests on the divine having taken visible form. Frontality, reversed perspective and gold ground are deliberate departures from naturalism, and compositions are received rather than invented. The dispute produced a century of destruction in Byzantium and another wave in Reformation Europe.