The idea for this blog first occurred to me when I was looking at the Monastery Icons catalog, a catalog company which began by selling reproductions of icons painted in a monastery in America, and has since grown to sell a much greater selection of sacred art. The name of the cataloger, Monastery Icons, conjured up images of the wonderful icon collections in the great monasteries of Christendom. It would be an education to me, and a service to others, to gather historical and iconographic information about the exceptional icons from these historic monasteries and record it in this blog.
Then the enormity of the project occurred to me. The collection of the Monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai alone is so enormous that just a small portion of it filled several rooms at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles when the museum arranged with the monastery to bring a portion of the monastery’s collection to the States in 2007. The icons and frescoes painted by the Cretan iconographer Theophanes Bathas fill entire multi-story churches in Greece, Mount Athos, and elsewhere. In Orthodox countries like Russia, monasteries fill the country, and the icons produced in them are seemingly countless. (Do a search for antique Russian icons in America, and the number available from auction houses and museums is astounding.)
I decided that rather approach the blog in a comprehensive, systematic way, I will rather write about the icons, monasteries, and iconographers that interest me at the moment. Instead of being original, scholarly writing, it will be a patchwork quilt of information from books, the web, and from my own personal experience. I will definitely have a lot of material to work with.
But why monastery icons? Why not church icons, or Christian icons? Because it has been the monasteries that have done so much to preserve the ancient icons from the past. It has been the monasteries that have continued the iconographic tradition, especially in times of persecution, and in times when it was not a lucrative proposition to produce and own icons. And it is in the monasteries that the icons shine forth in their full splendor, as jewels are enhanced by the most appropriate settings.
Who am I? I am simply a person who appreciates sacred art, especially the classical and otherworldly beauty of Byzantine iconography. And as most of the dedicated iconographers and artisans performed their work in anonymity, I prefer to let the light shine on the wondrous monasteries, icons, and iconographers written about here rather than on myself.
This blog is a small tribute to monks, prelates, laity and monastic foundations who have created, preserved, and shared the icons, frescoes, and other artwork in these holy monasteries. And again I wish to give a note of thanks to Monastery Icons, who in their own small way have done so much to revive the iconographic tradition in the United States, which had fallen to such a low ebb before they and others began to make traditional sacred art available again.
Leave a comment