Icon and Pattern: An Information Paradox

Thе article addresses one of the important and multifaceted problems of visual art: the artist’s use of patterns. This issue is especially relevant to traditional cultures, including Russian ecclesiastical art. The iconographic canon, whose dogmatic necessity was formulated by the Church Fathers, served for many centuries as the foundation of artistic practice in church art. The article examines the ways in which iconographic “information” was transmitted in the Middle Ages. A particularly important role in this process was played by icon patterns and icon painters’ pattern books. The expansion of the range of iconographic sources from the second half of the seventeenth century became one of the factors that contributed to the renewal of the subject repertoire and to the emergence of stylistic innovations in Russian ecclesiastical art.

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