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THE BYZANTINE ICONOGRAPHY, ART AND FORM OF REPRESENTATION OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD
Abstract
According to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, the sacred image has existed and is just as old as Christianity itself, which is why one can say that the sacred image is an indispensable attribute of the Christian religion. From an Orthodox perspective, the icon, understood as perceptible representation of the Divine, is not a simple sacred image, because, through it, the believers are given the possibility of an authentic connection to the world of God and of the Saints. The iconographic representations are theologically justified only in a close and fundamental connection with the embodiment of our Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God, so that the Orthodox Christian has the conviction that the icon is a place where Christ is present by grace, is a reality of the mysterious presence of Christ, of the Lord's Mother and of the Saints that the icon is depicting. We need to state that the Byzantine Orthodox iconography depicts not the beauties of this world or the physical beauty of the human body, but the spiritual beauty, the beauty of the communion between earth and heaven, the holy beauty sprung from the Holy Spirit. In other words, the icon depicts the work of grace in the believer and therefore the reason to be and the value of the icon do not lie in its objective beauty, but in what it depicts and represents: the image of beauty as divine resemblance. Consequently, the icons portray a universe governed not by the rational categories, but by God's grace.
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