EARLY ATHOS AND SINAI ENGRAVINGS AND THEIR ICONOGRAPHIC SOURCES: ICONS, PROSKYNETARIONS, GEOGRAPHICAL MAPS

Abstract

A comprehensive study and understanding of Greek religious engravings require identifying iconographic sources and understanding the masters’ choice of certain works. Which in turn reveals the purpose and history of the existence of Greek engravings. Icons were often the subjects of religious engravings. Therefore, such engravings have a second name, “icons on paper”; along with them, views of monasteries and holy places were depicted. There is a separate genre in books, icons, religious paintings1 , cartography, and that is images with views of the Holy Places: Jerusalem, Sinai and others. In an icon, this manifested itself in the form of large panoramic polyptychs, resembling an “iconostasis with a view of the holy places”, especially in the 18th-19th centuries. This genre of proskynetarions appeared as a synthesis of geographical maps representing holy cities and areas (such maps have become widespread since the 16th century) and travel sketches of travellers - naturalist scientists, researchers of antiquity and, of course, pilgrims. It is essential to understand what place Greek Orthodox engravings occupy among all these monuments. This study helps to answer this question partially. Several monuments were identified from catalogues using the method of bibliographic heuristics: icons, early Greek engravings, works by icon painters, early geographical maps, illustrations of proskynetarions, picturesque panoramas of the Holy Land, which made up material for an overview iconographic analysis. It made it possible to prove that the monks ordering prints in European cities and producing Greek religious engravings on their own used absolutely all possible richness of subjects, art monuments different in genre and execution techniques. They created a new phenomenon - the engraving of the Greek world, which organically fitted into the context of the existing culture.