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The Orthodox Pages
CHAPTER SIX FINAL THOUGHTS |
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THE ICON AND THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
The Icon exists to help us see in visible forms, the whole teaching of the Church and to make accessible through visible means the mystery of the Divine Economy to the human spirit. When we enter a church, the first things we notice are the Icons, the smell of incense and the voice of the choir. These elements work through our senses to lift our minds to a different plane, away from the worldly existence of our normal lives and to awaken in us, the senses of the soul which have otherwise been closed, due to the noise and rush of our daily lives. When we look into the Icons during the Divine Liturgy, we get a sense of feeling that the invisible world is among us and worshipping with us. The icon helps us to put aside our earthly troubles and raise our spirit to the heavenly plane so that we may receive Christ our King. It serves to make us aware of the words of the ‘Cherubic Hymn’ “Let us who mystically represent the cherubim and chant the thrice-holy hymn to the life-giving Trinity, put aside all earthly cares so that may receive the King of all who is invisibly attended by the angelic hosts”. The Icon makes this possible by staying clear of earthly reality and seeking through symbols, shapes and other forms, which have no identity with the real world, to speak to us of the spiritual world.
The Icon invites us to be partakers of this spiritual world by the way the objects are formed to get wider as they go into the distance, which at the same time creates the impression that the image is coming towards us. This is achieved by using various perspectives, but more especially ‘inverse perspective’. In art, perspective means the way lines are projected onto a surface in relation to the angle of a given object, thus creating an illusion as to its depth and distance from the spectator. In normal perspective, we see that the objects get narrower as they go into the distance and so create an illusion of depth. In Icons, this perspective is reversed so that the objects get wider in the distance. In other words, we have a back to front situation of what we consider as normal and is therefore called inverse perspective. By using inverse perspective with the secondary elements of the Icon [e.g. buildings, tables, seats, and very often the heads of a group of saints], we create an illusion that the representation has little or no depth. Everything is pushed out into the foreground giving the impression that the main figures are reaching out to the observer. With normal perspective, which creates depth, the spectator looks into the picture in a similar manner as when a person is inside a house and looks out through a window, so that the mind can have access to the world. With inverse perspective, the house becomes the kingdom of heaven and the Icon is the window and frame of the house. The person is no longer inside the house, but stands outside. He no longer has to look through the window to have access to what is behind it, but the spiritual world itself looks out and acts upon him, reaching out and inviting him to partake of the Kingdom of Heaven. The person has only to open up within himself the faculties of his mind and heart to receive it.
We can see an example of inverse perspective in the Icon of the Annunciation [See plate 14]. The building behind the angel is constructed so that we see the front, but. then it widens out in the background to reveal the two sidewalls, Also with the footstool of the Virgin’s throne, the part that is nearest to us is narrower and thinner than the part that goes away from us. We see the same effect with the Gospel in the Icon of Christ [plate 4].
The Icons serve to inspire, guide and encourage us to seek the Kingdom of Heaven. They also serve to remind us of Christ’s suffering and that He suffered all things for us so that we may have eternal life. They remind us that, the saints are those who genuinely served the Lord in faith and devotion and that we should strive to imitate them and follow in their footsteps. The Icon therefore expresses the Life of the Church and her worship, free from all earthly reality and revealing the spiritual reality of the Kingdom of Heaven, the kingdom of the Holy Trinity that is worshipped in spirit and in truth.
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