05 — Iconostasis and the Theology of the Image

Florensky’s writings on the icon are, with The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, the part of his work that has travelled furthest. Iconostasis, composed in 1922 and published in full only decades later, reads the icon screen as the visible form of the boundary between this world and the other, and the icon itself as a witness — a window through which the prototype is genuinely present. The essay “Reverse Perspective” (1920) argues that the icon’s non-naturalistic space is not a failure of technique but a deliberate refusal of the Renaissance subject’s viewpoint. Alongside these stand his lectures on the philosophy of the cult and his philosophy of the name, in which the same theology of the symbol governs the rite and the word.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Moscow Theological Academy; the Russian religious renaissance)

Two consistency notes govern this section.

On reverse perspective. The repository’s Holy Icons collection flags the modern theory of “reverse perspective” as art-historically contested — whether it is a rigorous, consistent system in Byzantine painting, and how far the theological reading of it (Florensky, Ouspensky) reflects the intentions of medieval painters (see The Language of the Icon). This section agrees with that framing and repeats the caution rather than quietly dropping it because Florensky is the subject here.

On the Name. Florensky’s support for the name-glorifiers (imiaslavie) is treated here as theology; the history of the controversy and its unresolved status belong to The Jesus Prayer, with which this section agrees and which it does not duplicate.

Files in This Section

File Description
Iconostasis and Reverse Perspective The 1922 book: dreams, the boundary, the face, the icon as witness; and the 1920 essay on perspective, with the art-historical caution
The Name, the Cult, and the Philosophy of Language Imiaslavie, the onomatology of At the Watersheds of Thought, and the lectures on the philosophy of the cult

See Also