Art History

Friday night we went to a pre-Advent presentation about icons at our parish. Our friend and homeschool art teacher is a real-live artist, who is gaining fame throughout our parish for her beautiful icon art.
Here's an example:
I learned so much about this fascinating and ancient art form, that I previously knew almost nothing about. This year in history the kids and I learned a bit about the Byzantine Empire, which followed on the heels of the Roman Empire, when the Emperor Constantine began to establish Christianity throughout the empire during the first century.
Icons (from the Greek eikones) are sacred images representing saints, Christ, and the Virgin, as well as narrative scenes such as Christ's Crucifixion. While today the term is most closely associated with wooden panel painting, in Byzantium icons could be crafted in all media, including marble, ivory, gemstone, precious metal, enamel, and mosaic.
In Byzantine theology, icons allowed the viewer direct communication with the sacred figure(s) represented and, through icons, an individual's prayers were addressed directly to the petitioned saint. This, of course, caused quite a bit of controversy related to whether people were praying to idols and so on.
Irrespective of all that, the art form is just amazing. Every color and line has meaning, and the complex process of creating an icon can be, in itself, a form of prayer. In the traditional method, paints are ground by hand from materials from the earth (clay, rocks, lapis lazuli, what-have-you) and mixed with egg yolk to form the paint itself. Often the gold color is actually gold.
After the presentation the kids had a chance to create a beautiful icon-like image for Advent. They loved it (almost as much as I did!).