Icons, Depictions of Divine Beauty

In no case, however, were these icons regarded as mere images. The holy figures and events that they portray stand for the human partaking in divine life.

The Incarnation of the Word had already shown that matter can become a vehicle of the spirit, and that human nature could be filled with divine life and divine beauty. The icons had to present the devout with a new way of life and lead them to communicate with the Divine, something impossible to accomplish with the language of the senses. In this spirit, tradition upheld that the first icons were created in a miraculous fashion, that they continue to perform miracles via the saints they depict, that they represent man and his environment as they are transformed by the love of God, and finally that they play an integral part in the life of the Church. The worshiper prays to the icons that he places on the prayer niche, the walls, and household shrine. At the same time, the presence of icons in the church implies the presence of the very saints they depict.

In the first years of the Sinai Monastery, its founders donated icons brought over from Constantinople, a practice that would also persist later as well. As liturgical needs increased, and the chapels within the monastery and on the mountain multiplied, not to mention the number of pilgrims, monks soon had to paint their own icons, while con- tinuing to receive others as gifts from a variety of pilgrims and lands. Thus, a collection that is unique in the whole Christian world slowly accumulated. The icons created before the triumph of Othodox faith in 843, are extremely valuable for the overall history of icons in the Christian church. After its capture by the Arabs in 641, Sinai stood outside the Byzantine territory, and thus the iconoclast emperors could not enforce the destruction of icons.

These early icons are painted using the encaustic technique, i.e., wax mixed with pigment kept molten in heated palettes. Some of these early icons are associated in terms of their iconography with miraculous icons in Constantinople and elsewhere, now lost, and even with some monumental frescoes. The icons painted in Sinai during the period of Iconoclasm are closely related to the art of Palestine and Egypt, [4.1-5], while their iconography contributes to the study of the history of Christian worship; for example, the Crucifixion [4.1], which must have been painted in Palestine, contains the earliest known depiction of Christ wearing a crown of thorns.

Regular communication with Constantinople and its art commenced again after the second half of the ninth century, as is attested by a number of masterpieces that arrived at the monastery at that time. A little while later, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a number of icons – monthly calendars that present daily saints according to the Christian calendar [5.2] – provide us with a hallmark for the icons produced in Sinai or at least destined for Sinai. The monastery holds the oldest and richest collection of such icons. They are also closely linked with the art of illuminated manuscripts. They are usually destined to adorn the prayer niche, or the shrine, but there are also large scale icons destined for many chapels, where they serve as substitutes for wall frescoes.

Around the mid-thirteenth century a particular group of icons appears that blend Byzantine with Western art. It is believed that these icons were painted in Sinai or its vicinity, by Italian and French artists who accompanied the Crusaders to the Holy Land. These icons have been aptly named Crusader icons. Another, rather unlikely, theory is that they are products of eastern Christian artists imitating Western prototypes [7.2, 9.1, 9.2]. The production of icons continued in Sinai and its dependencies even after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

The presence of the Cretan School of painting is conspicuous, through the works of renowned artists such as Angelos; the Cretan School also produced a particular Sinai iconography linked to sites of pilgrimage to Sinai, as well as the formal icon of Saint Catherine [16].

The adoration of the Theotokos is of particular importance – and appears in several iconographic typologies [1, 4.12, 5.3, 7.2-5, 8.2], as well as that of Moses [4.6, 4.7] and Saint Catherine [14.1, 7.5, 11.2, 16, 31] – and the visitor today can systematically follow its evolution in the exhibition.

The sacred icons and religious treasures on display in the new Sacristy demonstrate the unbroken lineage of Eastern Christian worship, in which prayer and spiritual transcendence are of the utmost importance. They are not mere aesthetical accomplishments, but depictions of divine beauty. GG