Reply To: Iconoclasm

[Bob Hook]

I think it is very interesting that Byzantine art is mostly religious in nature and contains images of people and saints who were considered very close to their religious figurehead. I understand this and it loosely is in compliance issue of the Second Commandment. However, by the time we get the end of the period we have Andrei Rublev’s, Holy Trinity, 1411-25 CE. These three figures actually represent God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. To me, this represents an image of God in all possible forms, and it may have been worshipped just because it was placed within a church. This seems to be in direct opposition to the Second Commandment. Yet in 1551, the Russian Orthodox Church, “Council of the Hundred Chapters’, declared that this was “the ideal medieval painting of its type and the model for all Orthodox Russian artists.