Thursday, July 03, 2014

Types of icons I particularly like

Roughly in order.
  • Icons of events containing icons. For instance, the icon of the miracle of Axion Estin. Or of St Luke painting an icon.
  • Icons containing collections of icons. What I am thinking of here is the icon of a tree containing the various styles of icons of the Theotokos.
  • Icons simply containing other icons. eg an icon of St Macrina holding an icon of her holy brothers. This is not as interesting of icons of events about icons or icons containing collections of icons, but I still like them.
  • Icons of many different events. For instance, an icon of the 12 Feasts - all 12 of them in one thing. Or, most ambitiously, an icon of the Calendar.
  • Parent and child - not necessarily Theotokos. eg. St Elizabeth and St John the Baptizer of Christ.
  • Icons of the saint surrounded by various small images of the life of the saint. The first of these I ever saw was of St John of Chicago because, well, I was in Chicago and they had the image all over the OCA parishes. They are a very common type of icon.
  • Icons of relatively obscure Dominical or Theometrical events.
  • Icons of Theophany containing the spirits of the water.
I'm sure there are more. That's all for today.

1 comment:

Nutmeg said...

I also love icons that contain other icons. On a similar note, I really like icons where the patron saint of a church/monastery is pictured holding a model of the building. I think that one of my favorite icons ever is at the entrance to St. Catherine's monastery. It shows the Theotokos as the burning bush, flanked by Moses and St. Catherine, with the monastery below them.