Georgian Icons

Modern Georgian Icons for sale.

By Edith McClintock

Icons are representations, most commonly paintings, used for prayer and teaching moral and spiritual lessons. They’re widely used in Eastern Orthodox religions and are extremely popular within the Georgian Orthodox Church. Most homes in Georgia display icons in a prayer area—often twenty or thirty devotional images of Jesus, Mary, St. Nino and the Georgian Orthodox Patriarch covering multiple walls.

Icons are important in Georgian history and the country’s most beautiful and rare cloisonné enamel icons, many previously lost or stolen from Orthodox churches in Georgia and Turkey and dispersed to museums and private collections throughout the world, are now exhibited at the Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts in Tbilisi. The 8^th-12^th century icons are both great works of art as well as religious relics imbued with nationalistic and religious symbolism and special powers of healing and miraculous events.

On the artistic side, cloisonné is an ancient technique first developed in the Middle East and Ancient Egypt for decorating metalwork such as jewelry. Geometric decorations were formed by soldering silver or gold strips to metal objects to create compartments of enamel or gems in a variety of beautiful colors (see the pectoral jewels of Tutankhamun on left).

In the Byzantine Empire, thinner wires were developed which allowed more detailed representations commonly found in icons. Byzantium icons became a highly developed art form that spread to Italy and Ethiopia and Georgia and beyond. In Georgia, Byzantine techniques were adapted and became a distinctive school, but both Byzantine and Georgian icon styles are represented in the museum.

When a Georgian friend invited me to see the icon exhibit (as she referred to it, although there were plenty of crosses and jewelry too) at the museum, it wasn’t for artistic reasons. Her interest was religious, which is why she thought the church rather than the national government should own and house the icons. She expressed her opinion at great length and volume to our tour guide while I studied the pretty jewelry, sure we’d soon be tossed out of the museum.

Khakhuli triptych,
Georgian & Byzantine cloisonné enamel, 8th-12th Century

We weren’t, and eventually we moved on to the history and symbolism of each icon (usually told with miraculous and nationalistic elements) followed by prayers, although given it was a museum we didn’t light and leave a candle in front of each icon as is the tradition in Georgian churches.

According to the Western Christian cannon, icons in early Christianity were considered graven images and therefore forbidden by the Ten Commandments. However, they also became a tool for teaching illiterate populations and their popularity spread. It wasn’t until the Reformation and Counter-Reformation of the 16^th and 17^th centuries that the popularity of icons in the West declined, although less so within Catholicism.

In contrast, Eastern Orthodoxy teaches that icons have been an important and unchanging part of the church since the beginning and continue to have deep religious significance. Veneration of an icon passes to the original so that kissing an icon of Jesus demonstrates love directly to Jesus himself, not just to the representational gold and cloisonné enamel or paint and woodwork. 

But whether you visit the Museum of Fine Arts in Tbilisi for religious, artistic, or nationalist reasons, you won't be disappointed.

Detail of Khakhuli triptych,
8th-12th Century

Detail of Khakhuli triptych,
8th-12th Century

Ancha Icon of the Savior triptych,
medieval Georgian encaustic (made with hot wax painting)
6th-7th Century

For more, visit my personal website or blog.

Mezuza's Magic

Raised by Communists, I knew little of the traditional Jewish culture, especially about its symbols and rituals. When I first saw a small, strange-looking trinket with Hebrew lettering on a doorjamb of our relatives’ house, I was curious.

“It’s a mezuzah,” my uncle explained, and added jokingly. “It’s a Jewish good luck charm. Keeps the evil energy away and brings good karma into the house.”

I liked the idea, but, raised by the same Communists, my uncle was wrong, which I found out years later. While mezuzahs are indeed placed on doorjambs symbolically, they don’t have anything to do with good luck. Nor do they bear any connection with the lamb's blood placed on the doorposts in Egypt. Rather, it is a constant reminder of god's presence and god's commandments.

In Hebrew, mezuzah (מְזוּזָה ) means doorpost . It is a piece of parchment called klaf contained in a decorative case inscribed with two sections of Jewish prayer “Shema Yisrael,” from the Torah's Book of Deuteronomy, in which God commands Jews to keep his words constantly in their minds and hearts. The prayer begins with the phrase: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God," and goes on for quite a while. When passing through a door with a mezuzah on it, one is supposed to kiss thy fingers and touch the casing, expressing love and respect for god and his will.

The mezuzah should be placed on the doorposts of every Jewish home. Mezuzot (plural of mezuzah) should also be placed in every room within the home with the exception of bathrooms because bathrooms are unclean. According to the Jewish law, the mezuzah should also be affixed to gates leading to communal places, synagogues, schools, and even on city gates, symbolizing the sovereignty of the commandments over the Jewish social and communal life. In other words, you must not forget that god is watching over you – even for a split second.

A lot of work goes into making a simple mezuzah. It may seem that the most complex piece of it is the case (which can be a work of art in itself), but the real effort lays is the creation of the parchment. The scroll is prepared by a qualified scribe, sofer stam who has undergone many years of meticulous training. The verses are written in black indelible ink with a special quill pen. The parchment is then rolled up and placed inside the case.

And now, a trick question: why is that most mezuzahs are attached at a 45 degree angle instead of vertically or horizontally? The answer lays in the Jewish culture – notorious for their debating talents, surpassed perhaps only by Italians, Jews can argue forever. So did the two medieval Rabbis Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam; they could not agree whether the precious symbol should be placed horizontally or vertically. Finally, they compromised, settling on the golden middle. Ever since, Ashkenazi Jews tilt the case so that the top slants toward the room the door opens into.

Alas, my mezuzah is not affixed at any angle on my front door. I keep none. Once I learned it wasn’t an enticing good-luck charm that kept me safe from evil spirits, but a religious symbol designed to remind me of god every time I set foot outside the door or returned home, it lost its magic.