Icon painting is a meditative, prayerful, and somewhat ritualized art form,
in which the materials and processes as
well as the image have symbolic meaning. God's whole creation gathers to create the icon,
in the form of the all - natural animal, vegetable, and mineral products used for the board,
gilding, painting, and oiling.
An icon completed by this "liturgically correct" process
is considered sacred, regardless of the quality of its art work.
Egg tempera on a gessoed wood panel was the usual medium for medieval and early renaissance art.
Experimenting with various additives, artists later formulated recipes for hand-mixed oil paints.
Paints packaged in tubes were a 19th-century innovation,
and a great convenience for outdoor landscape painting.
For iconography and other indoor painting,
the painters like to use fresh egg tempera much better than paint that comes in tubes.
Icons are strongly rooted in classical Greek and Roman art.
They were developed during the long-lived Byzantine Empire (330-1453) and its descendant cultures.
In recent years, iconography has attracted increased interest and many new practitioners.
There are numerous icon styles, most prominently Greek, Russian and Romanian.
Most historic examples are paintings in egg tempera on wood;
others are mosaic, fresco, embroidery, tapestry, precious metals, and enamel.
The most familiar icons are half-figures of Jesus, Mary holding the Christ Child, angels,
saints, apostles, and prophets. Other types include faces, full-length figures,
traditional group scenes representing special days in the church calendar, and
illustrations of Bible stories and legends of the saints.
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