Lobonţ Puşcas, Maria: Ceramica în colecţtia de etnografie a Muzeului Judeţean Satu Mare (Satu Mare, 2014)
Introduction
Introducere - Вступ - Introduction INTRODUCTION The first icon is described by a legend as old as almost 2,000 years. When Jesus was travelling to Jerusalem, where he would be tried and crucified, King Abgar of Edessa sent for Jesus to heal him. But Jesus could not travel to Edessa, so he sent the king a cloth that wiped his face first. The story tells that Jesus’s face imprinted on the canvas. The king’s disease was cured after the canvas was handed to the King of Edessa. The story of the first icon “unmade by man” continues later: it is said that after King Abgar received the cloth, he recovered and placed it as a symbol on the gates of Edessa fortress. In 544, when Persians besieged Edessa, the icon appeared in the dream of the Bishop of Edessa. He took it from the church wall and noticed that the image from the canvas was imprinted on the brick. The icon drove away the Persians; and there were two icons unmade by hand: one on canvas and one on brick. The canvas with Jesus’s face was the starting point of the tradition when Jesus and the saints were represented in an artistic way. The legend of the icon of Edessa, however, was extremely prevalent in the 8th century, especially among the Eastern Christendom. The icon is still widespread nowadays especially among the Eastern Christian church. For the Orthodox Church, the icon is “a window to Heaven”, a picture of a different reality or personae, of a time more real than the current one. More than artistic, icons have an important spiritual role. Michel Quenot states that an icon “expresses through colour what the Gospel proclaims in words.” This spiritual and educational role produces rigorous rules on the making of an icon. The author needs to prepare for the task of painting an icon by following a strict period of fasting and prayer. He must undergo his spirit to God’s will. He will not sign the icons that he will create. The author is not admired and recognized for his work as the primary role of icons is to inspire believers in prayer. Imagination is little used in the subject and topic of icons. The creative process, however, will follow a certain style and unique rules, with a tradition of several centuries. The primary purpose of an icon is to help into the prayer. Making icons is an activity with an old tradition, which, they say, is preserved to the idea that the first artist actually knew and saw the real model shown in the icon. They say, therefore, that the first icon of Jesus and Virgin Mary was painted by St. Luke. Each of the next authors will use the original icon as a model. Despite these limitations of the artistic creation, some authors’s talent, some original iconographic MUZEUL JUDEŢEAN SATU MARE
