f the Redeemer. It is unseemly, according to their views, to desire to portray a personality such as Christ, who is himself divine, because that would mean pulling the divine down into the materialistic realm.The Iconoclastic controversy lasted from 726, when Emperor Leo III began an attack on the use of religious images, until 843 when the empress Theodora allowed their restoration. The two periods of Iconoclasm were separated by the reign of the iconodule empress Irene, under whom the Second Council of Nicea 787 was held (2, 1). At this council Iconoclasm was condemned and the use of images was reestablished. The Iconoclasts regained power in 814 after Leo V's accession, and the use of icons was again forbidden at a council (815). The second Iconoclast period ended with the death of emperor Theophilus in 842. In 843 his widow finally restored icon veneration, an event still celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church (1, 1). The great significance of images of he saints for the Orthodox faithful is primarily expressed in the cultic veneration of the images within the worship service. Second, it is expressed in the categorical fixation of the figures, gestures, and colors in Eastern Church iconic art. In the West, the creative achievement of the individual artist is admired, but Orthodox painting dispenses with the predominance of the individual painter's freely creative imagination. Throughout the centuries the Eastern Church has been content with reproducing certain types of holy images, and only seldom does and individual artist play a predominant role within the history of Orthodox Church painting (3, 79). Most Orthodox ecclesiastical artists have remained anonymous. Icon painting is viewed as a holy skill that is practiced in cloisters in which definite schools of painting have developed. In the schools, traditional principles prevail so much that different artist-monks generally perform only certain functions in t...
