Non-Byzantine icons

[Angie]

I need some help. I am looking for Icons, that are not Byzantine, but actually have some meanings.

One of these Icons are Heaven & Hell (I think it's called Judgement Icon. There is another and it has the eye of God, saying that He sees, the ear meaning He hears etc.

One other one is about life. Start's off as a baby, teen, adult etc.

There is another Icon that shows death and what happens to the sould when it repented and when it is unrepented. It also has Guardian Angels taking the souls to Heaven.

These are Orthodox Icons but I can't find them anywhere. Can anyone recommend a good website that might sell these Icons?

+Angela

[Olga]

What do you mean by the term "icons that are not Byzantine"?

This is only a brief reply for now, more will follow. The icon of the Last Judgement is well-known, and is generally regarded as a "didactic" icon, its imagery derived from the Book of Revelation. (Another didactic icon is that of the Ladder of Divine Ascent.) While it is frequently painted on church walls, it has appeared as a portable icon from time to time. Can it be venerated as one would a sant's icon, or of a feast? Perhaps. But beware the versions which have the so-called "New Testament trinity" painted in the top section of the icon: God the Father should never be portrayed as a bearded old man.

The icon "The All-seeing Eye" is definitely uncanonical. I will post more on this. As for the one of human development, this is most likely simply an illustration painted in a non-realistic, "iconographic" style. Such pictures cannot be considered the same as icons, in that they are "decorative" only, and should not be venerated.

[Olga]

More on "The All-Seeing Eye of God":

The period between the 15th to 18th centuries saw the profusion of a number of didactic images, such as the All-seeing Eye, Christ Holy Wisdom, the similar Angel of Great Silence, and Only-begotten Son of God. These compositions were attempts to portray the mystical and symbolic side of God or Christ, to represent God or Christ as a personification of an attribute of His, or to illustrate in pictorial form the various elements of the Divine Liturgy, such as the Great Entrance.

These images were often very complex, and the often fanciful imagery was derived from the Book of Revelation, or borrowed from western sources and theologies which were often contrary to Orthodox canon. Unfortunately, these images are unsuitable for veneration.

The depiction of Christ in cryptic or symbolic form is nothing new. In fact, such images are found in the earliest art of the catacombs. Christ was also represented as a fish, from the acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour”, IXΘYC, which is also the Greek word for fish. The use of such non-representational images was quite understandable, given the severity of the persecution of Christians by the Romans in the first three centuries AD.

Once the persecutions were over, and iconographic canons could be developed, such symbolic portrayals were decreed to be unsound, as proclaimed in Canon 82:



In certain reproductions of venerable images, the Forerunner is pictured pointing to the lamb with his finger. This representation was adopted as a symbol of grace. It was a hidden figure of that true Lamb who is Christ our God, shown to us according to the Law. Having thus welcomed these ancient figures and shadows as symbols of the truth transmitted to the Church, we prefer today grace and truth themselves, as a fulfilment of the Law. Therefore, in order to expose to the sight of all, at least with the help of painting, that which is perfect, we decree that henceforth Christ our God be represented in His human form, and not in the form of the ancient lamb. We understand this to be the elevation of the humility of God the Word, and we are led to remembering His life in the flesh, His passion, His saving death and, thus, deliverance which took place for the world.


The necessity of representing Christ in human, not purely symbolic, form is a direct rebuttal to Arianism, Nestorianism, and other heresies which did not regard Christ as fully human and fully God.

This is not to say that symbols cannot be used in iconography. Leonid Ouspensky, in his book Theology of the Icon, makes the following comments:


….the symbols, the “figures and shadows”, do not express the fullness of grace, although they are worthy of respect and may correspond to the needs of a given epoch. The iconographic symbol is therefore not completely excluded. But its importance is seen as secondary. Our own contemporary iconography still retains several of these symbols: for example, the three stars on the robe of the Virgin, which denote her virginity before, during and after the Nativity, or else a hand descending from the sky to designate the divine presence. But this iconographic symbolism is relegated to its secondary place and never replaces the direct image.



Canon 82 expresses, for the first time, what we call the iconographic canon, i.e. a set criterion for the liturgical quality of an image, just as the "canon of Scripture" establishes the liturgical quality of a text. The iconographic canon is a principle allowing us to judge whether an image is an icon or not. It establishes the conformity of the icon with Holy Scripture and defines what this conformity consists in: the authenticity of the transmission of the divine revelation in historical reality, by means of what we call symbolic realism, and in a way that truly reflects the Kingdom of God.

This possibility and necessity of representing God the Son in the flesh which He borrowed from His mother is contrasted by the Seventh Ecumenical Council with the absolute impossibility of representing God the Father. The Fathers of that council repeat the authoritative argument of Pope St Gregory II, contained in his letter to the emperor Leo III the Isaurian:


“Why do we neither describe nor represent the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ? Because we do not know what He is ... And if we had seen and known Him as we have seen and known His Son, we would have tried to describe Him and to represent Him in art.”


Therefore, the attempt to represent either God the Father or God the Son in the form of the "All-seeing Eye" image, and the others I have mentioned above, is contrary to iconographic canon and to Orthodox Christology. No doubt these images were produced in good faith by pious Orthodox Christians, but good intentions are not enough to confer canonicity upon these images.