Icon
The image of saints belonging to sacred art can be traced back to early Christian times. The images and representations of saints are devotional items . The oldest verifiable images of saints were found as wall paintings in catacombs and early Christian basilicas . Later saints were also depicted on panels, especially on altarpieces of altars erected on the grave of a martyr .
Since the early Middle Ages, the church fathers endeavored to record the memory of the saints in codices , i.e. in scrolls in the form of images. An early tradition of painting images of saints existed in the Eastern Church in the form of icons . Many of these images were destroyed during the iconoclasm or iconoclasm in the 8th and 9th centuries. After the picture dispute was settled, the production of icons was resumed. Icons are still painted according to traditional models, especially in the Athos monasteries and in Russia .
The altarpiece is a special way of depicting secrets of faith or saints . In addition to painted images of saints, there are also carved, woven and embroidered as well as figurative representations.
A variant of the image of the saint that has developed in the Roman Catholic Church is the devotional image . Early forms are executed as woodcuts or copperplate engravings . Small-format images of saints (called saints or devotional images ), which are usually placed in prayer books , enjoy great popularity . They were also used to illustrate Bible editions .
See also
further reading
- Adolf Spamer : The small devotional picture from XIV. To XX. Century. F. Bruckmann, Munich 1930.
Web links
- Image of saints in the large art dictionary by PW Hartmann .