The Icons of the Theotokos

Why the Church covers her walls with images of the Mother of God, and how to read them. This section treats the theology of the Marian icon — always Christological, since she holds or points to her Son — the principal compositional types, and the great wonderworking icons in which those types took historical form.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The icon of the Theotokos is the most common of all Orthodox images and the least self-standing: with rare exceptions she is never shown alone, but always with the Christ she bore, so that every image of the Virgin is finally an image of the Incarnation. The honor paid to such icons, the Seventh Ecumenical Council teaches, passes through them to their prototype and so to God. These two files set out first the grammar of the Marian icon and then the particular images through which the tradition has most often been brought to the Mother of God.

Contents

  • Iconographic Types of the Theotokos — the theology of the Marian icon (John of Damascus and Nicaea II); the principal types (Hodegetria, Eleousa/Umilenie, Oranta and the Platytera/Znamenie, Panachranta, and the nursing and sweet-kissing variants); and the symbolic vocabulary — the three stars, the dark maphorion, and the abbreviation ΜΡ ΘΥ.
  • The Wonderworking Icons of the Theotokos — the great venerated images (Vladimir, Kazan, Iveron/Portaitissa, Tikhvin, and others), each with its origin tradition pinned to the earliest attestation and its legendary attributions distinguished from art-historical fact.

See Also