Icons

Icons

Christ Pantocrator

The principal image of Christ: the right hand blessing, the Gospel in the left. Found in the dome, to the right of the royal doors and at the centre of the deisis.

Icons

Deisis

Christ between the Mother of God and John the Baptist, both turned to him in prayer; the second tier of the iconostasis is named after it.

Icons

Eleusa (Tenderness)

The Child presses his cheek to his Mother's — the warmest of the types, including the Vladimir, Don and Feodorov icons.

Icons

Feast icon

An icon of an event rather than a person — the festal tier of the iconostasis, and the icon laid on the analogion on the day itself.

Icons

Hagiographic icon

An icon of a saint framed by small scenes telling his life in order — read like a page.

Icons

Hodegetria

The Mother of God holds the Child and points to him with her other hand — the most widespread type, including the Smolensk, Tikhvin and Iveron icons.

Icons

Icon

An image of Christ, the Mother of God, a saint or a sacred event, made for prayer — not a painting and not a portrait.

Icons

Icons of the Theotokos: the main types

There are hundreds of Marian icons but only a few types — Hodegetria, Eleusa, Oranta and the enthroned Theotokos — enough to identify almost any of them.

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Inscriptions on icons

IC XC, MP ΘΥ, NIKA, Ο ΩΝ — the short inscriptions that complete an icon and let you read it rather than merely look at it.

Icons

Miraculous icon

An icon linked with attested answers to prayer. It is the Church's veneration that makes an icon miraculous, not a property of the board itself.

Icons

Nimbus (halo)

The circle of light around the head. Christ's always contains a cross and the letters Ο ΩΝ; everyone else's does not.

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Oranta

The Mother of God with hands raised in prayer; with the Child in a medallion on her breast the image is called the Sign.

Icons

The icon corner

The place for icons at home — usually the east-facing corner with a lamp; a place to pray, not a shelf for a collection.

Icons

The iconographic canon

The rules by which an icon is painted — reverse perspective, light without a source, conventional space — and why an icon is not meant to look like a painting.

Icons

The Image Not Made by Hands

The face of Christ on a cloth — by tradition the first image of the Saviour, not made by a human hand.

Icons

Veneration of icons

The Church honours icons but does not pray to the board: the honour given to the image passes to the one depicted. Worship as such belongs to God alone.