Icons

This historical survey covers some one-and-a-half millennia of Christian imagery and includes descriptions of selected masterpieces. The icons in this book come from the Icon Museum in Recklinghausen, which possesses the most extensive and highest-quality icon collection outside the Orthodox world. Icons do not depict details of the earthly world, but rather an unearthly reality. In accordance with their sacred function, the painters had to keep to venerable traditions. All the same, the art of icon painting is characterized by an impressive variety of themes and formal variations.