Aesthetics for Birds

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art for Everyone

David Killoren Icon on the Triumph of Orthodoxy

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A woman holding a baby flanked by several figures all staring at the viewer.

This is entry #8 in our ongoing 100 Philosophers, 100 Artworks, 100 Words Series.

Philosopher: David Killoren (Coastal Carolina University)

Artwork: Icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey), Byzantine, about AD 1400. Egg tempera on gold leaf on a wooden panel. 

Words: Byzantine icons were simultaneously treasured and commonplace, kind of like baseball cards. Also like baseball cards—or high school yearbook portraits—the figures in icons often stare unsettlingly right back at you. Such is the case here. But this icon is special: it’s an anti-iconoclastic icon. It exhorts us to look at images. It venerates veneration. To some modern observers, this icon-about-icons exhibits a kind of postmodern irony. But it probably didn’t seem that way in its natural habitat, in Constantinople, around 1400 A.D.. when the empire had collapsed, the city was doomed, and icons were thought to represent salvation.

One Comment

  1. How did I miss this before going to Istanbul? More on Byzantine art please!

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