The Icons of the Theotokos and the Saints

The icons of the Mother of God and the saints extend the icon of Christ to the members of His Body. This file treats the great Marian types — the Hodegetria, the Eleousa, and the Oranta — the tradition (apocryphal) that St. Luke painted the first icon, the festal icons that make the feasts of the Church present, and the icons of the saints and their theological logic.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Why the Theotokos and the Saints Are Depicted

If the icon of Christ rests on the Incarnation, the icons of the Theotokos and the saints rest on their union with the incarnate Christ: they were real, visible human persons, they bear His grace, and in the saints God is glorified (John of Damascus, Three Treatises on the Divine Images III.10; trans. Louth, SVS Press, 2003; Nicaea II, 787, Horos, which names “our spotless Lady the Theotokos… and all the saints” among the proper subjects of icons). The honor paid to their icons passes to them, and through them to God whose holiness they share (see Image and Prototype). The Theotokos holds the first place after Christ, for she is the one through whom the Word took flesh; her icon is, in almost every type, an icon of the Incarnation, for she is nearly always shown with her Son (see St. the Theotokos: The Icons of the Theotokos). Her icons are marked by settled conventions: the deep-red maphorion (veil), the three stars on brow and shoulders signifying her virginity before, during, and after the birth, and the abbreviation ΜΡ ΘΥ (Meter Theou, Mother of God) (Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, SVS Press, 1982).

The “St. Luke” Tradition

A widespread tradition holds that the Evangelist St. Luke painted the first icon of the Theotokos from the life, and that several ancient icons — above all the Constantinopolitan Hodegetria — descend from his hand. [Apocryphal: the tradition that St. Luke painted icons of the Virgin is not attested in the New Testament or in any early source and appears only from about the sixth century onward, becoming prominent in the iconophile literature of the eighth–ninth centuries where it served to give the icon apostolic authority; it is best understood as a pious legend expressing the antiquity and authority of the Marian image rather than as historical fact (Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence, Chicago, 1994, on the Luke legend; Bissera Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium, Penn State, 2006). This collection reports it as a venerable tradition, pinned to its (sixth-century-and-later) attestation, and does not assert Lukan authorship of any surviving icon as documented fact (per METHODOLOGY §3.5).] The tradition is nonetheless historically important, because the many “Lukan” icons — the Hodegetria and its copies — carried enormous authority precisely because they were believed to reach back to an eyewitness of the Virgin herself (Belting, Likeness and Presence, 1994).

The Marian Types

Byzantine and Slavic tradition organized the icons of the Theotokos into a small number of great types, each expressing a theological accent:

The Hodegetria (“She Who Points the Way”). The Virgin holds the Christ-child on one arm and gestures toward Him with the other hand, presenting Him to the beholder as “the Way” (John 14:6); the Child, upright and blessing, is shown in majesty rather than infancy. The Hodegetria is the most solemn and “theological” of the types, an icon of the Incarnation and of Christ’s Lordship; its prototype, the great Hodegetria of Constantinople, was believed to be the icon painted by St. Luke and was the palladium of the city (Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 2006; Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, 1982). The celebrated Vladimir icon is of the closely related tender type; the Smolensk, Tikhvin, Kazan, and Iveron icons are among the many venerated Hodegetria-family images.
The Eleousa (“Tenderness,” Russian Umilenie). The Child presses His cheek to His Mother’s, His arm about her neck, in an image of intimate mutual love; the Mother’s face is grave and sorrowful, for she foresees the Passion. The Eleousa expresses the affective bond of Mother and Son and the compassion (and coming sorrow) of the Theotokos; its supreme example is the twelfth-century Vladimir Mother of God, a Byzantine icon brought to Rus’ and among the most venerated icons of the Russian Church (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, 1982; see Processions and Wonderworking Icons).
The Oranta / Platytera (“Wider than the Heavens”). The Virgin stands frontally with hands raised in prayer, and when the Christ-child is shown in a medallion upon her breast (the Panagia or “Znamenie,” the “Sign,” after Isaiah 7:14) she is the Platytera, whose womb contained the uncontainable God. This is the type traditionally painted in the apse above the altar, presiding over the sanctuary as the image of the Incarnation and of the Church at prayer (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, 1982; Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, SVS Press, 1992, vol. 2). The Novgorod “Sign” (Znamenie) icon is a famed example of the type.

These types are treated more fully in the sibling collection on the Theotokos (see St. the Theotokos: The Icons of the Theotokos).

The Festal Icons

Beyond the portrait-icons of persons stand the festal icons — the images of the events of salvation history commemorated in the Church’s feasts: the Nativity of Christ, the Baptism (Theophany), the Transfiguration, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection (shown as the Anastasis, Christ raising Adam and Eve from Hades), the Dormition of the Theotokos, and the rest of the Twelve Great Feasts (see The Twelve Great Feasts). The festal icon does not merely illustrate the historical event; it makes the feast present and interprets it theologically, gathering into one image the meaning the hymns of the feast unfold — so that the icon of the Nativity or the Anastasis is a visual confession of what the feast celebrates (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, 1982, on the festal icons; Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, vol. 2). The festal icons are ranged in their own tier of the classic iconostasis and are set out for veneration on their feast days on the analogion in the center of the church (see Veneration, the Iconostasis, and the Icon Corner). A distinctive festal image is the icon of the Anastasis (Resurrection): Orthodox tradition does not depict the moment of Christ stepping from the tomb (which no one witnessed) but the theological reality of the descent into Hades and the raising of Adam and Eve, “trampling down death by death” (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, 1982).

The Icons of the Saints

The saints are depicted as glorified members of the Body of Christ, each recognizable by settled features and attributes — the martyr with the cross of witness, the bishop in his omophorion holding the Gospel, the monastic in the schema, the warrior-saint in armor, the physician-saint (the “Unmercenaries”) with the instruments of healing — and each named in the inscription that fixes the prototype (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, 1982). The saint is shown not as he appeared in the turmoil of earthly life but as he is in the Kingdom: stilled, luminous, at peace, transfigured by the grace he received (see The Language of the Icon). To venerate the icon of a saint is to enter into communion with him and to ask his intercession, and to confess the great truth the whole company of icons proclaims: that in Christ the saints are alive in God, and that the material world can bear and communicate the holiness of the Kingdom (Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, vol. 1; see The Icon as a Window to Heaven). The icons of the saints thus complete the iconographic world: around the central icon of Christ stand His Mother, the events of His saving work, and the great cloud of those He has made holy (Hebrews 12:1).

References

Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Trans. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1982. (The Marian types; the festal icons; the icons of the saints; the Anastasis.)
Ouspensky, Leonid. Theology of the Icon. 2 vols. Trans. Anthony Gythiel. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1992. (The Platytera in the apse; the festal tier; the theology of the saints’ icons.)
Pentcheva, Bissera V. Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2006. (The Hodegetria of Constantinople; the Luke tradition; the Marian palladia.)
Belting, Hans. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. (The St. Luke legend and its growth.)
John of Damascus. Three Treatises on the Divine Images III.10. Trans. Andrew Louth. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press (PPS), 2003. (The depiction of the saints.)
The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787). Trans. Richard Price. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018. (The Horos naming the Theotokos and the saints.)
Scripture: John 14:6; Isaiah 7:14; Hebrews 12:1.