Icons

Softcover, flaps 18.5 x 23 cm


Sacred paintings of the Christian Orthodox



This historical survey covers some one-and-a-half millennia of Christian imagery and includes descriptions of selected masterpieces



The icons in this book come from the Icon Museum in Recklinghausen, which possesses the most extensive and highest-quality icon collection outside the Orthodox world. Icons do not depict “details” of the earthly world, but rather an unearthly reality. In accordance with their sacred function, the painters had to keep to venerable traditions. This historical survey covers some one-and-a-half millennia and includes descriptions of selected masterpieces, providing a graphic introduction to this fascinating world of images. While the books historical introduction traces the history of icon painting back to late Antiquity and the early Byzantine period, the examples in the picture section start with a 14th century Russian example and extend from the exquisite 15th century Byzantine icon “St Luke Paints the Mother of God” across the centuries to one from Transylvania (Romania) dating from 1887.



About the author:

Eva Haustein-Bartsch took her doctorate at the University of Bonn with studies on medieval Serbian ruler iconography. Since 1983 she has been academic director of the Icon Museum in Recklinghausen. She is a longtime member of the academic committee of the Icon Museum in Vicenza and is the author and editor of many exhibition catalogs, books, and articles, primarily on the Icon Museum and on international icon painting.