Icon and Devotion offers the first extensive presentation in English of the making and meaning of Russian icons. The craft of icon-making is set into the context of forms of worship that emerged in the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-seventeenth century. Oleg Tarasov shows how icons have held a special place in Russian consciousness because they represented idealized images of Holy Russia. He also looks closely at how and why icons were made. Wonder-working saints and the leaders of such religious schisms as the Old Believers appear in these pages, which are illustrated with miniature paintings, lithographs and engravings never before published in the English-speaking world. By tracing the artistic vocabulary, techniques and working methods of icon painters, Tarasov shows how icons have been integral to the history of Russian art, influenced by folk and mainstream currents alike. As well as articulating the specifically Russian piety they invoke, he analyzes the significance of icons in the cultural life of modern Russia in the context of popular prints and poster design.

"Icons were among the first religious objects brought into Russia from Byzantium at a time when Christian art was already highly developed. Although the art of the icon (the sacred picture of the Greek Orthodox church) could be said to have reached perfection in the Byzantine world, the Russians, nevertheless, were able to give it a new, national complexion and produce some of the finest examples of the art. Icons were first produced for use in churches and processions. As their size became smaller, so demand fro them as religious household objects grew. They have remained an important feature in Russia's orthodox religious cultures to this day. The 65 plates in this book show work as beautiful as that of the greatest Italian primitives. The icons date from the 14th to 17th centuries, many belonging to the School of Novgorod, once the cultural centre of Russia. Other sources include the renowned school of Rublev and Dionysus"--

"from the collection of the Moscow State Integrated Museum-Reserve at Kolomenskoye."

Titian, one of the most successful painters of the Italian Renaissance, was credited by his contemporaries with painting a miracle-working image, the San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross. Taking this unusual circumstance as a point of departure, Christopher J. Nygren revisits the scope and impact of Titian's life's work. Nygren shows how, motivated by his status as the creator of a miracle-working object, Titian played an active and essential role in reorienting the long tradition of Christian icons over the course of the sixteenth century. Drawing attention to Titian's unique status as a painter whose work was viewed as a conduit of divine grace, Nygren shows clearly how the artist appropriated, deployed, and reconfigured Christian icon painting. Specifically, he tracks how Titian continually readjusted his art to fit the shifting contours of religious and political reformations, and how these changes shaped Titian's conception of what made a devotionally efficacious image. The strategies that were successful in, say, 1516 were discarded by the 1540s, when his approach to icon painting underwent a radical revision. Therefore, this book not only tracks the career of one of the most important artists in the tradition of Western painting but also brings to light new information about how divergent agendas of religious, political, and artistic reform interacted over the long arc of the sixteenth century. Original and erudite, this book represents an important reassessment of Titan's approach to devotional subject matter. It will appeal to students and specialists, as well as art aficionados interested in Titian and in religious painting.

An intimate portrait of holiness as exemplified in the lives and thoughts of ten people of faith in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The author introduces readers to a diverse and unusual group of men and women who strove to put the Gospel of Christ into action in their lives.

A history of icons in the Menil Collection Clare Elliott -- The icon and the museum Bertrand Davezac -- How icons look Anne Marie Weyl Carr -- Icons from the centuries of the Byzantine Empire (AD 324-1453) Annemarie Weyl Carr, Bertrand Davezac -- Post-Byzantine icons from the Balkans, Greece and the Islands -- Russian icons