FAQ

Iconographers, of course, do not know exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ and the Mother of God looked like. Similarly, little is known to us about the appearance of saints who lived before the invention of photography. There is a tradition passed down from generation to generation, but it certainly does not claim such knowledge. Portraiture in the first century was still only emerging, and was not widespread in the East. However, for Greco-Roman culture, the portrait was already quite a common thing. In short, icons are not portraits. Nevertheless, the most characteristic features of Christ's appearance more or less coincide in many ancient depictions. It cannot be excluded that all of them, albeit approximately, convey the same face. It is especially important in this regard that these features are also inherent to the face of Christ that we see on the Shroud of Turin.

Among Christians, there is a tradition that lifetime depictions of Christ did indeed exist; these are, firstly, the Shroud; secondly, the so-called "Veil of Veronica," a cloth that a certain woman gave the Savior to wipe His face during the Way of the Cross (from which the iconographic type of the "Image Not Made by Hands" originates); and thirdly, a portrait that, according to tradition, was made by someone for King Abgar of Edessa. From a historical point of view, the latter two traditions raise serious doubts; nevertheless, the possibility of the existence of certain depictions cannot be excluded. It is important that they could only have been made by non-Jews, as it was impossible for a Jew to depict a human being. The Eastern Church preserves the tradition that the author of the first depictions was the Evangelist Luke, a Greek by origin, who specifically gathered all available information about Christ in the mid-first century. According to this tradition, it was the Evangelist Luke who painted the first icons, which were followed by later iconographers and artists.

The oldest surviving depictions of Christ, the Mother of God, and saints date back no earlier than the 3rd and 4th centuries; for the 1st and 2nd centuries, the use of symbolic drawings and signs is characteristic.