Духовните аспекти на православната икона
Spiritual Aspects of the Orthodox Icon

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the present article is to examine the spiritual aspects of the orthodox icon, i. e. of byzantine figurative art. Based on the dogmatic formulation (Seventh Ecumenical Council, AD 787, Nicaea) of the nature and significance of the holy images, we will first turn our attention to their aesthetic influence, not from an artistic standpoint, since numerous works have already been written on the subject, but in regards to the category of beauty in terms of theological thought. Second, we will examine the spiritual aspects of the icon, viz. historical, liturgical, dogmatic-canonical and morally edifying. One of the concerns of the discussion will also be the issue of the rightful understanding of the concept of Byzantine art, since Byzantine is oftentimes erroneously perceived as greek, and not as east orthodox, especially by connoisseurs of classic orthodox icons. This misconception will be refuted in what follows below. With this end in view, and in order to make things fully clear, we will carry out a retrospective examination of the development of christian art during the ages since the founding of the church in the first century AD, until the beginning of the Neo-Byzantine period in ecclesiastical art in the 15th century. Attention has also been drawn to bulgarian ecclesiastical art during the National Revival (17-18th century AD), mentioning only a single iconographer – Toma Vishanov-Molera, the founder of the Bansko school of fine arts. We deliberately focus on him alone, since his works illustrate the tendency of all revival iconographers to follow western academic models, which was not well accepted by the conservative bulgarian society of the time. A detailed analysis of the considerable differences between icon and western religious drawing will not be done, since similar expositions are already available to academia, especially those of russian art research experts.

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