Dzieje świętych wizerunków w chrześcijaństwie – zarys historii

Icon painting emerged in the Byzantine Empire - the Christian empire of the Hellenistic East during the years 330-1453 - as a fully fledged and widely spread art around 500 BC. The first steps in this art were taken in the early Christian art of painting including those examples found in the catacombs in the 2nd and 3:d centuries. It is an original, highly formalized art influenced by classical Greek art and Egyptian Hellenistic art as well as other art traditions especially Syrian. During the reign of Justus the Great who ruled in the Byzantine Empire for forty years (527-565), the Byzantine art of icon painting flourished. It continued to do so until the outburst of the Iconoclasm in 726. That year the emperor Leo III decreed that painting or using icons was to be regarded as idolatry. The Iconoclasm lived on, with a few intermissions until 843. From 843, when the church conquered the iconoclasm, the art of icon painting was revived, this time until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. This era was a golden age for the icon. During this second period of icon painting, its principal prototypes were shaped and the habit of adorning churches with icons was established.