This famous icon, from St. Catherine's Orthodox Monastery on Mt. Sinai, depicts Jesus Christ with two different looks on His face: One is of a loving man, and the other is a fearful judge.
Attempt of computer-reproduction of the two faces of Jesus.
Calendar of Iconography
January	February	March
April	May	June
July	August	September
October	November	December
	Easter related

ABOUT BYZANTINE ICON-PAINTING ART
Introduction
from the book "EXPRESSING THE ORTHODOX ICONOGRAPHY"
By +Fotis Kontoglou
A famous hagiographer and author

"Virgin Mary", by Fotis Kontoglou

The art of Icon painting in the Eastern Orthodox Church is a holy, liturgical art, like all the ecclesiastical arts, which have a spiritual purpose. The aim of these arts is not merely to decorate the church with paintings, in order to make it more pleasing to the faithful, or to delight their ears with music: it is to elevate them to the mystical world of faith by the spiritual ladder, the steps, or rungs, the holy arts like the composition of hymns, church-architecture, religious painting and the other arts. All these work together in order to cultivate the mystic Paradise in the souls of the faithful. Accordingly, works of art in the Eastern Church are commentaries on the divine word.

The art of Icons in the Orthodox Church is called "hagiography"* or "holy painting", because it depicts holy persons and subjects. The painter, or "hagiographer" is not simply a craftsman executing a painted representation of a religious subject: he has a spiritual mission, which he fulfils in the church, just like the priest, and the preacher.

The liturgical Icon has a theological meaning. It is not, as we have said, a painting made to delight our eyes, or even to remind us of holy persons, like the pictures we keep at home to remind us of our beloved relatives and friends; it is painted in such a way as to elevate us above the corrupt world. It therefore has nothing in common with paintings that portray people in a material manner, including Saints, as we see in the religious art of the West. In the liturgical icon, holy persons are portrayed in imperishability.

Comparison between Western European and Orthodox holy art
This masterpiece of painting made by Rembrandt (1661) is kept in the Museum of Louvre, Paris, France. It depicts an angel inspiring St Matthew the Evangelist. The human beauty of the faces eliminates the spirituality of the holy figures.	This is a mid-15th-century Cretan Byzantine icon by the hand of Angelos. It is kept at Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai. It depicts St John the Evangelist dictating his Gospel to his disciple St Prochorus. The mind is concentrated in the act and not in the faces.

For this reason, liturgical art does not change like other human affairs, for it is immutable, like the Church of Christ to which it gives expression. The holy tradition is the column of fire that leads the church through the wilderness of the unstable world. This comes as a surprise to men of the present century, who are not prepared to plunge into the depths of the spiritual sea, but swim only on the surface of the senses, carried away by the currents and whirlpools of the waters.

Liturgical art nourishes the believer with spiritual sights and sounds, filtering what enters through the gates of the senses, delighting his soul with the heavenly wine, and bestowing upon him peace of mind.

The present book is technical and visualising, and the reader may think that has nothing to do with theology. But he has to know that in the Orthodox Church enerything is spiritual. In the same way, dealing with icon-painting, even the cruel tools and the paints and the walls and the wooden boards and all the material things are consecrated by the Holy Spirit's grace and are turned into instruments of a holy art.

Technical skill in this art is not merely a mechanical matter, but partakes of the spirituality and sanctity of the things it wishes to portray. For this reason, the technical vocabulary of religious painting, the names of the tools and the expressions used for all aspects of it, have a religious character. The very materials used by the religious painter are blessed, humble, fragrant, delicate. To make carbon with which to draw, the craftsman uses the wood of dry hazel or myrtle; to make a panel on which he can paint the icon, he uses cypress, walnut, chestnut, pine, or some other fragrant tree. His paints are mainly earth pigments that give off a sweet aroma when they are mixed with water, especially in the art of wall-paintings, where they smell as sweet as the mountains with the first rains of autumn, or like a new pitcher of refreshing water. His lacquers are as fragrant as incense, and whoever kisses the icon senses an aroma of spiritual fragrance. The materials used in the icon, in addition to earth pigments, are egg mixed with vinegar, wax, pine resin, fragrant realgar, mastic, honey, and almond gum. This sacred art does not make use of coarse, thick materials like secular art, which uses foulsmelling linseed oil and thick paints and coarse-haired brushes.

When they speak of technique, religious painters frequently use religious words, for example, "do not paint the "psymmithiai"** pure white, but with a little ochre, so that they are humble and penitent", or, "dyes have so much sweetness and piety", and so on. The beauty of liturgical painting is a beauty of the spirit, not of the flesh. The art is abstinent and austere, expressing richness through poverty, and just as the Gospels and the Old Testament are concise and laconic, so Orthodox religious painting is plain, lacking in excessive ornamentation and vain displays.

The old religious painters fasted when they worked, and when they began an icon they changed their underclothes, so as to be pure both internally and externally. As they worked, they chanted psalms, so that their work would be executed in a spirit of contrition and so as to prevent their mind dwelling on worldly matters.

For this reason, the most preeminently liturgical Icons seem malformed to those who have the spirit of the world, and in their eyes the people portrayed have "neither form nor beauty" for "the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God" [ Romans 8:7 ]. "For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh" [ Galatians 5:17 ]. In the holy icons, "the flesh is crucified along with passions and desires".

Their spiritual beauty is "the fine distortion" through which Saint Symeon the New Theologian said that he saw in the fasting faces of his spiritual children during the great fast of Lent. The Mystic Gate, the gate to the East, is and shall be closed to all those who occupy themselves with knowledge of the flesh, which, "inflates" or makes a man proud, according to St. Paul. Whereas "the eyes of the Lord are on the humble, to delight in them". Just as the religious painters who made the holy icons had piety, humility and faith, so should we who venerate them, in order to be worthy of the mystic grace shed from them. In the words of St. Gregory the Miracle-Worker: "This power is needed both by those who prophesy and those who listen to prophets, and one should not listen to a prophet, upon whom the spirit of Prophecy has not bestowed judgement in what he says".

FOTIS KONTOGLOU

* We have to explain that the term "hagiography" (being a Greek word) is used in Greek language to denote painting, not writing about saints, as probably would be expected in the English use of the word (much like "photography"). The best translation for "hagiography" is "holy painting".

** Psymmithia is the name for the fine white lines added to highlight various parts of the icon.