... those fashioned from small glass tesserae (mosaics) or carved in stone, metal or ivory -- we associate it most often with paintings on wood. Icon painting appeared not as art for art's sake, but for the Church. Thus, its content was determined directly by the needs and the purposes of the Church. These purposes were not material but spiritual. The purpose and the ideal of Byzantine icon painting was the expression of the category of holiness, which was not made to appeal to the senses by being physically beautiful. In Christian art the beautiful is not determined by the natural form of the objects, but by its sublime content. Byzantine icon painting did not copy nature nor seek the form or the color as an end, but taking such technical and artistic elements as were necessary for the believers to become familiar with its spirit, succeeded, through an exceptional abstraction. When we look at ...

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