STILVON Handpainted Byzantine Icons

ΣΤΙΛΒΩΝ Χειροποίητα Βυζαντινά Έργα

 

Eleftheriou Venizelou 235

Palaion Faliron, Greece, 17563

T: (+30) 213 030 2401

F: (+30) 213 030 2404

info@stilvon.com

  

The art of hagiography as an expression of adoration and deep faith of the Christians has appeared since the early post-Christian years, blooms though in the post Byzantine years, when we meet important testimonies for the traditional way of icon manufacturing. Hagiography is the representative interpretation and the supplement of Divine Service and the Holy Bible, with which the Church narrates the lives of the Saints, shows the holy and hallowed figures and more generally makes the invisible points visible with symbols, representations and intellectual messages, drawing her subjects from the Gospels and the Saint - Holy Texts and the traditions of Orthodoxy.

 

The picture is the effigy, the reproduction of reality with the attribution of persons, historical events or allegorical scenes via a figurative art, mainly painting. In the hagiography there is a harmonic collaboration between art and theology, thus the picture, founded in the doctrine of incarnation, reveals with forms and colors what the Holy Bible declares. In this way, hagiography is rendered for a type of literature to the believers, an open book, a progressive initiation to the doctrines and the truths of religion.

 

According to the tradition, the first picture was not-handmade,

but created in a miraculous way by Jesus Christ himself and was constituted as a model to all the later pictures. Evangelist Lukas is considered to be the first historical hagiographer.

 

The Byzantine artists of hagiography cultivated and developed an excellent technique, rendering with their work a medium of unstoppable continuity and tradition of centuries.

 

In the art of hagiography, which is frugal and simultaneously admirably comprehensive, nothing is accidental. Each material that is used constitutes offer to the Divine total participating in the mystery of Divine Service. Thus we will meet materials which are humble, earthly, blessed, which with their material sweet smell bring out the spirituality, playing their own symbolic role in the depiction of Saint

Figures. Timber, on which the picture is painted, earthly colors, egg and vinegar as conjunctive materials of colors, wax for the maintenance of timber, honey and raki.

 

The depiction of Saints is symbolic, since they are forms that exceed the earthy space and time. Figurated forms are followed that give to the work high spirituality without allowing it to downrate into a simple representation of a secular person.

 

Contrary to the painting of West after the Renaissance, the light springs out from the persons themselves, transmits their internal extramundane shine and finally identifies with the colour. With the deliberate lack of prospect that removes the depth, the spectator becomes the only recipient of all the forces of inner colour - light.

   

Our workshop, with faith and respect to the long-lasting tradition and the prototypes of the art of hagiography, as this is written in the testimonies that are retrieved up to our days, follows concrete stages for the manufacture of a Byzantine portable icon:

 

Drawing of the icon in paper, Preparation of the surface of the timber, Imprinting the drawing on the timber, Gilting, Waxing (according to the colours of the icon), Writing (dark output), Lammata (light output), Characteristics of the face, Lammata of the face (brightness

of flesh), Inscription of the icon, Varnishing. Each stage is part of the same rite bringing its own symbolisms to achieve the final divine result.

 

The planning is always based on the models of older icons. The most common are the depictions of Christ and Virgin Mary, the two major persons of Orthodoxy. One of the most basic iconographical compositions is the hagiography of “Dodekaorto”, that is to say 12

events in the life of Christ and Virgin Mary. The many-faced portable icon is also referred to as “hypothesis”. In this term, we mean the completed composition, which describes an event in the life of Christ or Virgin Mary from the “Dodekaorto”.

 

The timber on which the icon will be impressed symbolizes the tree of life of Paradise. It is important to fulfil certain conditions of appropriateness, such as dryness and resistance. For these reasons, we use massive timber, which assembles the required

attributes for the successful imprinting of the icon on it, and no synthetic substitutes.

 

Afterwards the completion of drawing, the first surface that accepts colour is the environment of the or plain, that is to say the background of the person or the many-faced scene of the subject, on which leaves of gold are stuck. This is called Gilting of the icon.

The gold symbolizes the imperishable and the eternal, and for this reason anything depicted the golden depth does not belong to the natural environment. Consistent to the tradition, we use leaves of pure gold.

 

In the next stage, that is the painting of icon, we follow the technique called “egg-tempera”, that is to say mixing colours in powder with a mixture of crocus of eggs and vinegar. This

mixture helps in the stabilisation of the colours.

 

Afterwards, the word Saint and the abbreviation of the name of the saint figure are impressed in the icon and finally the surface is varnished so as to stress the colours.

The traditional technique of Byzantine art has proved that it bears in the depth of centuries, thanks to the materials used and the style.

 

In our workshop, following the rules of this technique, we can guarantee the same inalterable in-depth time resistance for our works, provided that these are not placed near hearths of heating, are not exposed in the sunlight and they are not placed in humid places.