Orthodox Question of the Day

One of my parishioners at St. George's always asks the best questions, often in person, but sometimes by e-mail. I got her permission to post the questions and answers in the hope that they're more broadly useful. Keep in mind that these are e-mail dialogues, not doctoral dissertations, so I'll ask your forgiveness in advance for the occasional imprecision and a total lack of footnotes.

Q.O.D.: With all of our icons, how do we know that the people depicted look like they do -- in terms of physical appearance? Did someone paint pictures of Jesus that got passed on through time, or of Mary or the Apostles...?

A.O.D.: The thing to remember about icons is that they're not intended to be photographic. They are meant to depict a spiritual rather than a physical reality. So over time, as the Church comes to understand the spiritual characteristics of a given saint, they are "canonized" in the forms of biography (the saint's life), hymnography (the various services to them), and iconography. Just as there are "canonical" forms for the biographies and hymnographies, there are also canonical forms for the icons. A martyr always holds a small cross. A healer, a small bottle of medicine. The Theotokos is always depicted in the same sorts of attire, always (with the exception of deisis icons, which are always done in a series centered on Christ) with Christ, never alone. She always looks the same -- i.e., you'll never see a blonde Theotokos, or a black Theotokos. It's not about making her relevant to the "artist", nor about giving flight to his or her creative fancies about the subject. It's about soberly, traditionally, and canonically expressing the spiritual realities about her in parallel with the scriptural realities, the liturgical realities, etc.

That being said, in the case of modern saints (for example, St. Raphael of Brooklyn) where we have photographs, there is usually a reasonable resemblance between the icon and the subject. In the case of more ancient saints, perhaps the original iconographers knew the person, and the icon bore a reasonable resemblance. But fairly quickly, the icon of that saint became enshrined in its own tradition, so that an icon of St. Nicholas is always recognizable as St. Nicholas, 1700 years later.

Regarding Jesus in particular, there is the tradition that He left an impression of His face in "the holy napkin". Regarding the Theotokos in particular, there is the tradition that St. Luke painted three icons of her, which established the canonical traditions about her appearance in icons.

If these traditions are historically accurate, you could say that the resulting icons are accurate depictions. But again, this is very secondary in importance to the spiritual accuracy.

Hope this helps!

ds