Until the 16th century even illiterate people knew how to "read" icons, and one icon sometimes replaced dozens of sermons.
Upwards
Icons should be read from the bottom up, as if rising from the earthly world to the heavenly. Saints are often depicted standing on the ground, but reaching heaven - this was, metaphorically speaking, their life path. Sometimes at the bottom of the icon there are important attributes, details of the lives of the saints, which are not striking if the image is not viewed sequentially. In ancient icons, even the frame board plays a role, this is the border between our world and the world represented in the icon - the spiritual. In the Syrian and Egyptian deserts, it was not so easy to get a tree, let alone a linden - also a symbolic plant.
If you look closely at ancient icons, the line between the frame and the image is usually drawn in color - most often red. This border is called "husk" (like a thin film in seeds that "peel"), it symbolizes the border between the low and high worlds, and it is red because this border, this transition, was given by blood …
Attention to the background
The background on the icon plays an important role, like everything else - they say that not a single millimeter of the icon is written meaninglessly, just like that. In the most ancient times of Christianity, the background of the icons was painted in detail to show the reality of the events that took place on them. Later, the reminder of reality will become less important for the icon. Much more often now we find a solid background: gold or white. These two colors are the highest in the Byzantine tradition. White is the color of paradise, and the icons that have it in the background clearly show the person standing in front of them that the action is taking place in paradise. Gold is the color of holiness and a special, immaterial radiance. In addition, gold does not change color, it is permanent and associated with eternity. Scripture compares the martyrs who suffered for Christ with gold tested in the furnace.
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The icons of the saints sometimes depict the places of their lives and deeds. For example, the Cathedral of the Kiev-Pechersk Saints is painted against the background of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra; Mary of Egypt is depicted against the background of the desert; blessed Xenia - against the background of St. Petersburg and the temple at the Smolensk cemetery. There is a famous icon of John of Shanghai, it depicts a pavement and a taxi - this is where this saint lived.
Symbolic colors
We have already said about the white and gold colors on the icon. But other colors also have their own symbolic meaning, and it is probably interesting to know that there is a color that you will not find on canonical icons. This color is gray, a color obtained by mixing white and black. In the spiritual world, heaven and hell, holiness and sin, good and evil do not mix, and darkness cannot embrace light. Therefore, for icon painters who treat color as an image endowed with meaning, and never choose a color arbitrarily, “for beauty,” gray is not needed.
Red has several meanings at once. It is the color of blood, the color of Christ's sacrifice. Therefore, the people depicted in the icon in red robes are martyrs. The wings of the archangels-seraphim close to the throne of God shine with red heavenly fire. But red is also a symbol of the Resurrection, the victory of life over death. There are even icons with a red background - a sign of the triumph of eternal life. The red background always fills the icon with an Easter sound.
Blue and blue colors correspond to the sky, other, eternal peace and wisdom. This is also the color of the Mother of God, who combined both the earthly and the heavenly. So you can always recognize the Mother of God Temple by the blue domes.
Decoding attributes
Even the smallest attributes on icons give us “keys” to understanding them. The Russian Seven has already dealt with this topic, for example, in the material about the Burning Bush icon. What are the most common attributes of saints on icons? Crosses in the hands of the saints usually mean that this person was martyred for his faith.
Often in the hands of the saints on the icon is given what they are famous for. For example, on the palm of Sergius of Radonezh, they write the monastery founded by him. Saint Panteleimon is holding a box of medicines. Saints and evangelists hold the Gospel on icons. Saints - rosary, like Seraphim of Sarov, or scrolls with sayings or prayers, like Silouan the Athonite.
Sometimes the attributes of the saints are unexpected, amazing, and they can be understood only by knowing the life.
For example, the holy Tsarevich Demetrius can be depicted on icons wearing a crown (although he was not crowned), often with nuts in his hand, which he played with before his death.
Or the amazing icon of the holy martyr (we read it from the cross in his hand) Christopher, instead of whose head there is depicted, surrounded by a halo, the head of … a dog. This is an exaggerated episode from his life: the martyr Christopher prayed to God to take away his beauty in order to avoid temptations and make him terrible.
Understanding shapes
The figures on the icons are also symbolic. So, for example, a square or rectangle, on which the saint's feet often stand, means the human - our land and the fact that the action takes place in the suburban world. In figures with a large number of angles, this number is symbolic: a hexagon that brings the theme of the six days of creation, an octagon with Eternity, and so on.
A circle is a perfect figure without corners, symbolizes the fullness of being, and is often depicted on icons of the creation of the earth. In addition, the halos are circular. And on the icon "Rejoices in Thee", for example, the entire figure of the Mother of God is inscribed in a circle (mandorlu) - a symbol of Divine glory. And then the outline of the circle is repeated over and over again - in the walls and chapters of the temple, in the branches of the Garden of Eden, in the flight of mysterious, almost invisible heavenly forces at the very top of the icon.
Perspective and sides
Everyone who is interested in them has heard about reverse perspective in icons. It is no secret that the reverse perspective emphasizes that it is not the person who stands before the icon that is the center of the world, but the One who seems to be looking at him from the icon. But what is rarely talked about in connection with a reverse perspective is the sides. After all, if the icon is painted “from a different point of view,” then its right (for us) side becomes the left (for it) and vice versa. And the parties also have their own symbols. The right side (from the point of view of internal organization, i.e. the left for us) corresponds to the foreground (and present time), and the left - to the back (and future time). This helps us to understand many icons, for example, the iconography of the Last Judgment, in which the righteous are represented on the left of the viewer, and the sinners on the right, and not vice versa.
Center icons
In the center of the icon, the most important thing is usually depicted - that from the point of view of what (or Whom) it tells. For example, the compositional center of the famous "Trinity" by Andrei Rublev is a bowl, which is blessed by the hands of angels. The entire movement of the inner gaze of the praying person takes place around this bowl (remember here the symbolism of the circle).
The Gospel is often the pictorial center of the icon. The perspective of the icon seems to unfold from him, the side edges of the book are painted in bright colors. “We see the cover of the Gospel, but the bright edges growing in depth show how incomparably more important is what is behind this cover,” writes one of the researchers.