Icon - Greek-speaking Regions

Greek-speaking Regions

Today icons are used particularly among Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Coptic and Eastern Catholic Churches.

Of the icon painting tradition that developed in Byzantium, with Constantinople as the chief city, we have only a few icons from the 11th century and none preceding them, in part because of the Iconoclastic reforms during which many were destroyed, and also because of plundering by Venetians in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and finally the taking of the city by the Islamic Turks in 1453.

It was only in the Comnenian period (1081–1185) that the cult of the icon became widespread in the Byzantine world, partly on account of the dearth of richer materials (such as mosaics, ivory, and enamels), but also because an iconostasis a special screen for icons was introduced then in ecclesiastical practice. The style of the time was severe, hieratic and distant.

In the late Comnenian period this severity softened, and emotion, formerly avoided, entered icon painting. Major monuments for this change include the murals at Daphni (ca. 1100) and Nerezi near Skopje (1164). The Theotokos of Vladimir (ca. 1115, illustration, right) is probably the most representative example of the new trend towards spirituality and emotion.

The tendency toward emotionalism in icons continued in the Paleologan period, which began in 1261. Paleologan art reached its pinnacle in mosaics such as those of the Kariye Camii (the former Chora Monastery). In the last half of the 14th century, Paleologan saints were painted in an exaggerated manner, very slim and in contorted positions, that is, in a style known as the Paleologan Mannerism, of which Ochrid's Annunciation is a superb example.

After 1453, the Byzantine tradition was carried on in regions previously influenced by its religion and culture — in the Balkans and Russia, Georgia in the caucasus, and, in the Greek-speaking realm, on Crete.