Art of the Eastern Church

“Trying to capture the essence of Eastern Church art in its entirety through artistic objects is an undertaking that can hardly succeed,” admitted Gerhart Egger, Director of the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna and scientific director of the national exhibition, right at the beginning of his foreword in the catalog. The aim was not only to show the different types of icons and cult objects, but also to give a voice to the various churches and spiritual currents.

The center of development in the East was Byzantium, the Nova Roma on the Bosporus, which existed until 1453. Byzantium was also the guiding light for the Christianization of the Slavic kingdoms that followed the Byzantine Empire. This shows that the core of the artistic development of the Eastern Church was in the Greek sphere. The purpose and task of the exhibition was to illustrate this with its precursors and successors.

The aim of the exhibition was to show that despite theological and canonical differences and disputes, a largely uniform system of pictorial conception and representation existed in the Christian East, which “based on theological considerations, exhibited an awareness of tradition unknown in the Roman West”, explained exhibition director Egger.

“In its origins, the icon is not defined as a work of art,” wrote art historian Hilde Zaloscer in the September 1977 issue of ‘Kulturberichte’. ”It is neither intended to teach nor to illustrate a sacred event, and it certainly does not seek to convey aesthetic pleasure. Rather, it is an object of worship, an extra-artistic phenomenon, even if it can be experienced purely externally by the viewer as a work of art,” explained Zaloscer, who worked at the University of Alexandria for 25 years.

In the Eastern Church and for Eastern theology, the icon is a carrier of the divine, a symbol of the deepest mystery of the Incarnation. “Eastern Christianity not only recognizes revelation through the word, but also through the image,” said Zaloscer. In the East, the icon is a sacred object, and painting an icon is also a liturgical act similar to worship, which takes place with prayer and fasting.

30 lenders from ten European countries have provided around 250 exhibits for this exhibition. “Valuable manuscripts, objects of worship, precious priestly vestments and, above all, icons are intended to open up the world of Eastern Church art and culture to visitors as comprehensively as possible,” says Clemens G. Moritz, Provost of the monastery.

The Augustinian Canons' Monastery in Herzogenburg also offered itself as an “excellent setting” (Governor Andreas Maurer) for this provincial exhibition because it is linked to Orthodox religious communities through various ecumenical contacts.

Herzogenburg Abbey