For the past five or six years, I’ve been working on the icon of Christ’s Nativity. Unlike a portrait icon of a saint—which I can usually design and sketch with a week spent learning, praying, and sketching—a festival icon is far more complicated in both its composition and theology, so the time spent designing any such icon increases dramatically. Given that perhaps the most complicated icon the iconographer inherits from within the canon is that celebrating the incarnation of Christ at Christmas, working out its drawing has taken substantial time indeed …
Of course, this isn’t to give the impression that working out this complicated icon has been an all-consuming task within the studio over all those years. Instead, there have been a couple of weeks a couple of times a year when either the pace of work at the studio slowed down, or inspiration struck, and sketching has ensued to either add or replace aspects of the icon’s sketch. As such, this particular icon represents the most concerted effort I have ever given to one specific icon and is chock-full of specific joys—expressed in line and colour—that embody the richness coming out of the orthodox tradition and stories of the nativity.
As with most festival icons, some of its complexity comes from the rendering of so many figures and their interactions. As an example, when I painted the icon, The Washing, it was necessary to work out in its drawing all twelve apostles, as well as Christ, and arrange them together into a unified whole. When I confessed to my spiritual father (Fr. Ed, of blessed memory) that I was struggling to justify the time it had taken me to finish the icon, he remarked that it wasn’t just a single icon but thirteen individual ones! While this is true of the icon of the Nativity, this particular icon actually expands on this concept and its complexity. Rather than combining individual figures, it actually combines each member into a little scene (making it more like a grand festival icon composed of simpler festival icons.)
The result of this is that as the Nativity icon expands, it adds more and more to the cosmic vision of Christmas it reveals. Rather than simply adding more and more figures to fill out the details of a single event, it adds whole new elements with each addition. Whether King Nebuchadnezzar appeared in The Fiery Furnace was a detail I worked out compositionally when designing the icon (ultimately deciding not to include him), but in doing so, it didn’t affect the icon’s message. This is quite a different story in The Nativity, where each element of the icon cannot be considered based solely on compositional need but rather on the part of the revelation it embodies.
It’s because of this iconographic complexity, and the expansive wonder of the events depicted, that the iconographer inherits three different traditional sets of events, which can expand or contract the vision of Christmas. In its first iteration, the icon of the Nativity focuses solely on the birth of Jesus Christ in the stable cave; in its second, that vision expands to include the events that interacted with that birth; and in its third, it expands again to include the immediate consequences of that night. With an eye to finishing an icon of the nativity this year, I chose to have my composition for this work participate in the middle form.
The prototypical form of the nativity used as the foundation for this icon is composed of six events (with the seventh being the icon as a whole.) These six events are:
- The Stable Cave
- Joseph and the Shepherd
- The Midwives
- The Shepherds
- The Magi (or Wisemen)
- The Angels
Each of these little feasts embodies a tradition of the church—drawing from its theology, history, and stories—which come together to reveal the wonder of the Word of God becoming present on earth and how that enlivens our faith today and forevermore.
In this little Advent series that follows, we’ll be taking a careful, meditative look at the icon of the Nativity in order to be even more present to the wonder that is found in our Christmas Nativity Feast. New posts will be published each Wednesday and Friday during the next three weeks, with the final post appearing on Christmas Eve. Comments on each post will be open for the month, and I hope you’ll take the time to share your own thoughts, offer a prayer, or ask questions.
I hope this icon and these writings will be a blessing to everyone during our observation of the Advent of our Lord. —Symeon
Rejoice, she with whom our joy dawns;
Rejoice, that by which the curse is gone.
Rejoice, restoration of Adam from his errs;
Rejoice, liberation of Eve from her tears.
Rejoice, height to which the thoughts of men can hardly ascend;
Rejoice, depth to which the angel’s eyes can barely apprehend.
Rejoice, you throne for the King;
Rejoice, for you hold him who holds every-thing.
Rejoice, star causing the sun’s manifestation;
Rejoice, womb of the divine incarnation.
Rejoice, through whom is creation recreated
Rejoice, by whom is the Creator procreated.
Rejoice, O unwedded Bride!
The Akathist Hymn, fourth stanza
(from the translation of Fr. Seraphim Deds)