Amazing icons adorn churches all over Greece, in our church beautiful works of art hang from the walls, sit on pedestals, never is a church empty in Greece, because the Angels and Saints are always there even when we humans are not. In the Orthodox Christian faith our Christian extended family is found in the icons. However, there is more to these beautiful works of art and below are some interesting examples.
Saint Catherine Monastery in Sinai
https://orthodoxwiki.org/File:Sinai_Monastery.jpg
This beautiful icon of Christ Pantocrator was probably painted in Constantinople around the middle of the 6th century, painted with coloured candles on a thin wooden panel 84 x 45.5 cm, this large icon has previously been cut at the top and along the sides, this may explain the slightly off-centre placement of Jesus Christ. The icon was probably later donated to St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, this is probably why the icon survived the iconoclasm when there was mass destruction of icons, as it was so far from Constantinople and it is believed that it did not end up under the protection of Islam and Mohammed himself saved the icon and other icons in the monastery, there is written evidence of this in the monastery. Even today the monastery houses more than 2,000 icons, dating from the sixth century to modern times.
People who have seen this picture will have noticed something different from other pictures of Jesus Christ, the eyes look somewhat different. In fact there is something different and deliberately so. The depiction of the face is not symmetrical, the fact is as you can see in the image labeled "Mirrored composites of left and right sides of image" that we are looking at 2 different images, both of Jesus but different, so what does it all mean!
It is accepted by many that the image shows the 2 sides of our Lord Jesus Christ, one side is the heavenly God and the other side depicts the human nature of our Lord Jesus Christ. The right side depicts the divine nature with his hand outstretched in a blessing, his eye looking at us but just above our line of sight.
The left side depicts his human side, the face looks a little more tense and not so relaxed, he is holding the word of God in his hand because he is the teacher. His eye is in the same line as ours.
Many pictures show the aspects of God, but I think this is the only picture that uses the face to show the different aspects.
Many icons are colored to show the 2 sides of Jesus Christ, many icons show Jesus dressed in light to dark red, gold and blue clothing. As you can see in the image titled "Jesus Christ Almighty ( The Mosaic of Devotion in Hagia Sophia,) Constantinople" Jesus is wearing a red tunic with a gold pattern, gold is used in the images to represent the Heavenly God, the blue colored tunic represents man. God wears the flesh of a man, but it is God in him, God in the flesh!
