“ALIENS FROM SPACE”: CHALLENGING THE “DARK” TRADITION OF ICON PAINTING

A reader asked me about the inscription on this modern Ukrainian icon:

(Original icon by Василь Стефурак / Vasil’ Stefurak: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)

 

The border inscription is not written in Church Slavic, but is the Ukrainian version of a very ancient prayer — the oldest known prayer to Mary — called in Latin Sub Tuum Praesidium.  The inscription around the left top and right border says:

“We run to your mercy, Virgin Mary, do not despise our prayers in sorrows, but save us from troubles, only pure and blessed one.”

 

The icon title at the base — Napuvaiushchaya / Напувающая — means “Watering” in Ukrainian, so this is the “Watering” Mother of God icon.  I have not seen the type before, so cannot say whether it is original to Stefurak.

The very contemporary style of the icon is an example of how Ukrainian iconographers — after years of Russian domination politically and in the arts — are breaking free of the notion that the dark and heavily stylized aspect of the Russian icon painting tradition — “the black and brown iconography of the saints” — is to be considered the ideal standard.  Stefurak’s icon challenges that convention in which dark faces, illogical perspective, and a “flat” appearing depiction somehow came to be seen as the manifestation of holiness.  Here are Stefurak’s views on the matter, as described in the article “Revival of the Icon: Shape, Light, Color,” by D. V. Stepovik (https://www.kpba.edu.ua/publikatsii/statti/1299-vidrodzhennia-ikony-forma-svitlo-kolir.html)

“Do not accept the black and brown iconography of the saints – call this iconography Byzantine, Bulgarian, Athonite, Muscovite or any other.  I was prompted by the Holy Scriptures and reading the lives of the holy fathers. I felt in my heart that Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, the apostles, and the many … saints were not like the Greeks, Muscovites, and others in the Middle Ages … I cannot correlate the most beautiful of the sons of men, Jesus Christ, as Psalm 44 [45:2 KJV] says of Him, with that 70-year-old-looking grandfather who is in the domed mosaic as Pantocrator in the Sophia [cathedral] of Kyiv. I do not accept the image of the Virgin Orant with masculine features on the mosaic of the conch [apse] in the same Sophia of Kyiv. And this is not my self-will, not arbitrariness, but the firm knowledge that the Mother of God and her Divine Son are bodily descended from the beautiful family of King David.

I do not accept Saint Nicholas with the color of Ethiopian skin, because his life describes him in a completely different way. Numerous saints were examples of nobility and beauty, and they did not look like aliens from space, but, unfortunately, some aliens for some reason painted and are painting them. I will never do that, even on orders and requests, on the assurance of a good payment – I will not go against the truth. “

Of course some of the saints did have darker skin, and the color of one’s skin has nothing to do with one’s validity as a saint.  There are “black” saints and “white” saints and saints with all kinds of shades of skin in reality.  But whatever one may think of his views overall, Stefurak has a point that making dark skin the standard for all saints is merely a tradition that developed in Russia and became a convention, partly because of the darkening of icons over the years and the continual recopying from such darkened images.

Here is a detail from Stefurak’s rendering of the Arkhistrategos Michael (The Archangel Michael):

(Vasil’ Stefurak: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)

Stefurak paints icons in his home workshop in the village of Fitkiv (Фитьків) in Prikarpattia (northeastern Carpathian foothills region).  Further works by Stefurak may be found in the book Ukrainian Style of Icons by Dmytro Stepovyk.