Light from the East: Masterpieces from the Ikonen-Museum Recklinghausen

On view for the first time in the United States, the icons in this exhibition are rare treasures from the Ikonen-Museum Recklinghausen, the largest and most important collection of Orthodox icons in Western Europe. Light from the East follows the twin branches of Greek and Slavic icon painting from the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917.

This exhibition testifies to Greek and Russian icon-painters grappling with the rise and fall of empires. By the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 1453, Greek and Slavic icon painting had grown into distinct branches on the tree of Orthodox iconography, at times intertwined by shared artists and Orthodox faith, at other times separated by wars, conquests, tastes, and trends.

Fleeing the Ottoman conquest of Byzantium, Greek icon painters found patronage both within the colonies of Roman Catholic Venice and within the Orthodox diaspora spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean. On Crete, icon-painters blended the elegance of the Renaissance with the timeless authority of Byzantium in producing masterpieces prized by both Orthodox and Catholic clientele. Yet, with the fall of the Crete—one of the last great icon-painting centers of the eastern Mediterranean—Greek icon painting contracted, taking on a regional approach as artists produced icons with more modest means for local markets.

By the eve of the Russian Revolution, the icon had long been established as a key means of asserting continuity between Imperial Byzantium and Tsarist Russia. With Constantinople fallen to the Muslim Ottoman Empire, Moscow asserted its identity as the center of the Orthodox church, proclaiming its imperial status as the Third Rome and political successor to the Byzantine Empire. Moscow’s ambitions to unify Russia, saw the multiple diverse regional styles like those of Pskov and Novgorod, consolidated into a unified imperial style.

In the first exhibition in the US dedicated to the post-Byzantine legacies of Slavic and Greek icon painting, Light from the East offers audiences an exceptional opportunity to encounter the depths and power of the sacred icon.