The Icon and the Collector
Collecting art is an individual pursuit. It
cannot be relegated or delegated to another.
It is a personal quest that drives the collector
to acquire and assemble a group of objects
that somehow elicit the deeply felt need that
compels him or her to strive to acquire that
object. That quest is never undertaken with-
out reason, even if the reason may not be
plainly understood by the collector himself. of this important region. The Hellenic icon
is a very intimate part of this history, as the
Greeks became the defenders and custodi-
ans of the Byzantine icon. So, the history of
the Hellenic people advances in lock-step
with the history of their icons. And in a way,
collecting Greek icons may be viewed as
paying respect and personal homage to that
brilliant history.
After the brilliant achievements of Ancient
Greece, in the mind of most people today,
the Hellenic World falls under the radar until
their re-emergence in the 19th century. But
these people did not simply disappear after
the Roman conquest of Ancient Hellas. As
the Roman writer Horatio said of the Greeks:
“Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes
intulit agresti Latio.” (“Greece, the captive,
made her savage victor captive, and brought
the arts into rustic Latium”). 1 The following essay, together with the
explanatory notes that accompany each
icon in the second part, provides an over-
view of the contributions made by the
Hellenic peoples to the formulation of the
Byzantine dogma relating to icons. Addition-
ally, it attempts to show the interconnected-
ness of the history of the Greek icon with
the history of societal conditions, intellec-
tual trends, and religious dogma and prac-
tice. Finally, it discusses the emergence of
the “Greek icon” as distinct from the art of
Byzantium and the post-Byzantine regional
Schools of religious painting that flour-
ished in the Hellenic world after the fall of
Constantinople.
The Greek-speaking people of the eastern
Mediterranean were major active participants
in the religious, political, and philosophical
events that marked the post-antiquity history
1. Horace. Epistles. 2.1.156.
The Argie & Emmanuel Tiliakos Collection of Greek Icons
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