Andrey Rublev, an early fifteenth-century monk in Moscow, is considered by many to be the best Russian icon painter . His work was recently pointed out to me by a young Hungarian woman, who has spent a good bit of time in Russia. Kati writes: “I cannot tell how and why, but somehow it is clear that the person who painted these loved God very much. What is very interesting for me is the corners of the Trinity-members’ mouths; I haven’t often seen a loving smile without mannerism in paintings . . . . These icons somehow enchant you and do not let you go, when you see them real. The Savior is not a beautiful painting in the general sense, but you feel his eyes on you.”
Images of images: Even in pixilated, thumbnail form, the mystical beauty of the icons—once praising God in cathedrals and monasteries, now ornamenting gallery walls—filters through. But what a shabby filter: The 600-year-old originals, Kati notes, speak with gently haunting tones that can scarcely be captured by the fanciest LCD technology. And yet the most masterful icon is but an image—a shabby image of the One who made both paint and painter. How much greater, I wonder, is this gap of imaging? How much more beautiful is He face to face?
