Cristian Ungureanu
Pages 80-96
DOI: 10.5840/cultura20063222
ABSTRACT
“What is below is similar to what is above, and what is above is similar with what is below, in order to accomplish the miracle of one thing only.” Apart from an unexpected increase of the number and quality of the authentic Byzantine art exhibitions and of graphical and conceptual high quality publications dedicated to this subject, the Byzantine iconography was always the object of a bizarre chapter, located at the end of the art history conventions. It was always considered as being much too tributary to the quasi-immutable doctrine of the Orthodox Church and this aspect was considered by the modern people, as being a factor that limits the liberty of creation. We could say it’s about one of the countless, natural, overthrows of perception, which characterize the thinking of the modern man. After the multiple level study of the Byzantine iconography in its most flourishing period (14-15 Centuries), we reached the conclusion that the icons of this period also represent a sum of geometrical structures of an extreme beauty and power of visual impact. In the majority of the cases, these schemes surpass the deep and painted frames of the wood panel and are covered by impeccably realized images, which represent the key moments of the Christ’s revelation history but also scenes which anticipate it or of the terminal point of the present human cycle (respectively The Judgement Day). The images are in a perfect harmonic relation with their geometrical structures and they become real windows opened to the archetypes’ territory (mundus imaginalis). The inverted perspective, the support’s rigidity characteristics, work techniques (specific to the fresco) and the sending to the deepness of the painted plan, whose proportions are always measured with a very ! Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, Tabula Smaragdina.