Symbolic visual language, iconographic prototypes and Disney Princesses

Part II: The icon and the Incarnation

“What the word communicates through hearing, the painter shows silently.”

St. Basil the Great.

In Christian iconography, particularly as it is understood today in Eastern Orthodoxy and Byzantine Catholicism, the iconographic prototype is central both liturgically and theologically.

Some weeks ago, we started a discussion about the concepts of the iconographic prototype, “originality” and “copying” in Christian sacred art, both east and west. Authentic Christian sacred art is based in the connection between Christ and material creation: the Incarnation of Christ changed the relationship not just between man and God, but between God and all physical matter, the whole cosmos.

A “classic” icon of the Transfiguration, by Theophanes the Greek. 15th century.

“What makes an image sacred art is the effort to depict their glorified, heavenly condition - the underlying, invisible spiritual reality. Icons aim to capture the spiritual essence rather than a mere physical likeness.”

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