The Christmas icon. The origins of the Greek Christmas icon and the painter’s manuals.

by Jan Verdonk

Always on the Greek Christmas icon we see a large number of scenes.

How did this composition originate? What do the painter’s manuals say?

(Christmas icon, 15th century - private possession from the former Volpi Collection London.)

Immediately after the recognition of christianity by Constantine the Great (312), christian representations were depicted on stone sarcophagi. As for Christmas, it began almost symbolically with just the Child in the manger with the ox and donkey. The manger appears to be a woven basket. The ox and donkey, who do not appear in the gospel, were already involved in the manger by the church father Origenes (185-254) based on the prophecy in Isaiah 1:3. They warm the Child with their breath we often read. Still in the fourth century, the representation is expanded: Mary sits beside the manger with sometimes Christ on her lap. One or two shepherds hear the angel's proclamation or worship the Child. The wise men from the East travel after the star or worship the Child with gifts in their hands. Joseph stands by the side. Present is sometimes a prophet with a scroll. The scene is sometimes a schematically indicated stable. Reliefs on more precious materials such as silver, gold, ivory and marble date from the fifth century. In 431, Mary was named Mother of God (God-bearing) at the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus. This made Mary a second focal point of Christmas representation in the fifth century. Also arising is the type of the adoration of the wise men, in which Mary sits frontally with Christ on her lap.

Finally, in the sixth century, the main elements of the final composition arise in Palestine, based on local tradition and written tradition, including the apocryphal books:

• Christ as Child, wrapped in cloths.
• The manger becomes a higher structure of stone.
• The stable becomes a cave, based on the proto-evangelion of James.
• Mary sits on a rock or lies on the maternity bed.
• Joseph sits pondering because Mary appears to be pregnant with the Holy Spirit.
• The two midwives Zelomi and the faithless Salome wash the Child, according to the proto-evangelion of James. They were fetched by Joseph, according to the pseudo-evangelion of Matthew, but arrived too late for the birth. How important the apocryphal books are proves the fact, that the conversation between Mary and the doubting Joseph during the journey from Galilee to Bethlehem entered the Orthodox liturgy (Meniaion) via pseudo-Matthew and pseudo-Jacobus. The conversation deals with the necessity of the Son's incarnation, so is of central dogmatic significance.

By the twelfth century there is a new range of materials with which Christmas can be depicted: mosaic is on the decline, on the rise now is the cheaper fresco, the mural, and beyond that there is the icon, the miniature, enamel, and still ivory.

Added to the elements of the final Christmas image are:

• The proclamation to the shepherds by the angel.
• The wise men following the star, and the adoration of the wise men.
• The old shepherd. He wears an animal skin or is dressed as a shepherd. He may appear in several places in the composition and is therefore not, as has often been written, the devil whispering doubt to Joseph. The manger takes the form of a stone tomb, as a foreshadowing of the Passion. There are also the Tree of Jesse after Isaiah 11:1, the flute-playing shepherd straight out of an ancient scene, the sheep, and the mountain after Habakkuk 3:3. The Christmas liturgy also says that Mary is the Holy Mountain.

On fresco or mosaic, the Christmas image is often broad, with the eye wandering from one scene to another. See, for example, the mosaics in the Hosios Loukas in Greece and in the Chora Church in Istanbul from the 11th century.

The icon, however, requires more of a narrow composition, and it did arise, as, for example, the miniature from the Vatopedi Monastery (opposite)

on Athos from the fourteenth century. We are then still in the Byzantine era of the Paleologist emperors. From the Greek Christmas icon at this stage, broad and narrow, emerged the Russian.

The Cretan school (1400-1600) performed the two compositions both. The Venetians were the occupiers of Crete and thus elements from Italian art crept into Cretan, while earlier the Macedonian school (1200-1400) had already been influenced.

The painter’s manuals

Dionysius of Fourna (1670-1745) was both a priest and an icon painter. For the technical part of the “Hermeneia,” he used material from the Lucca manuscript (9th or 10th century) and from Theophilus and Cennini (14th century). Other parts are from later than 1600. He collected what had already been written and completed it. But, he says, if the reader cannot figure it out, he can find more in the synaxaria and liturgical books. Dionysius lived in a hard time of economic and artistic decline under the rule of the Turks. He could not travel and there was no information. He selected, described and canonized some of the icons he had seen (and not the oldest and best).

Fotis Kontoglou (1895-1965) has the great merit of having written the complete painting manual, the “Ekfrasis” (1960), for the Greek style. He taught at the Art Academy of Athens and by studying especially the Cretan school on Athos he himself arrived at a kind of neo-Byzantine style, with which he said farewell to the prevailing 19th century realist icon painting as an example first to a few and then (since 1990) to an entire generation of icon painters. He held up to the Greeks that the Byzantine, Macedonian and Cretan icons were Greek heritage. His research enabled him to point out “Western” influences in Greek icons. His criticism of the 'Hermeneia' is, that it also describes icons coming from Western painting, via Italian and German engravings. Furthermore, the 'Hermeneia' treats oil painting - we work with pigments and egg, Kontoglou says imperatively. It becomes clear how much he looks back to the past and then values only that which has not been touched by Western art.

Dionysius and Kontoglou do not agree in the description of the Christmas icon. Dionysius gives fewer scenes than Kontoglou. The washing of the Child is missing and he prescribes a kneeling Mary. As we now know, the kneeling Mary comes from Italian art and is found on Cretan icons even before 1500. Dionysius evidently assumes an icon “heavily leaning on Italian art”. Typically, according to Kontoglou, Mary must be lying on the childbed. But of course, as usual, because a theological statement is made on the icon: Mary has given birth to the Son of God. How Kontoglou lashes out at the wriggling crowd on the far-Italian icons! 'The Lord who became Child for us does not even stand out among that crowd'. Then prefer the 'awesome simplicity' of the true Greek icon. The question remains as to whom the painters should follow, Dionysius or Kontoglou. Dionysius seems to have had no sense of the Church's oldest iconographic tradition. Did he not want to? Did he like the other better? Kontoglou succinctly says that the ikonographic types of saints and biblical scenes in Orthodox icons are unchanging. Generations of painters passed them on faithfully and obediently. That is our task as well. So, convinced Kontoglou is right, we will follow his painting book. Dionysius was but a child of his time, the 18th century, when everything was just a little less.

Only one other Christmas icon is conceivable. Both books mention “The Adoration of the Wise Men. This includes three scenes: the wise men carrying their gifts to Mary with Christ on their arms, the horses waiting further on by a servant and the wise men returning to their land. Domenikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco) painted a very far-Italianized version of it in 1565 (Benaki Museum, Athens).

Could the liturgy have influenced the Christmas icon? Surely it is said that the liturgy explains the prophets and the gospel theologically and determines the image! Here is the troparion of Christmas: “What can we offer you, Christ, who was born into the world for us? For each of the creatures brought forth by you gratefully offers its gifts: the angels their song, the heavens the star, the wise men their gifts, the shepherds their admiration, the earth a cave, the desert a manger, but we humans offer you a mother and virgin.”