Heavenly images

This richly-illustrated book brings us face-to-face with some of the most beautiful and unfamiliar images in European civilisation.

Although we refer every day to icons, by which we mean a variety of things from movie stars and classic cars to little symbols on a computer screen, we in the West seldom see the real icons which are so important in the Orthodox churches to the East.

Tradition traces the use of icons to an original painting on board of the Virgin and Child by St Luke. Orthodox believers insist that icons allow them to concentrate their meditations on the doctrines of the Church.

In the early days of Christianity, when few people could read, they were vital in spreading the Church's teachings by depicting important Biblical events to the illiterate, and the icon painter still works under strict rules which give religious purpose supreme importance, with artistic merit irrelevant.

As Richard Temple, who owns a London gallery specialising in icons, writes, the painter 'invents nothing from his subjective imagination. He is no more free to introduce novelties than the priest celebrating the liturgy.' This is far from the individualistic tendencies of Western painting since the Renaissance, even of religious subjects, and Mr Temple's book will help us to adjust our vision.

We need to recognise the spiritual power as well as the artistic strength of images such as the ones made in the 15th century by the great Moscow monk Andrei Rublyov, including the extraordinary Veronica image and the solemn and beautiful St John the Precursor, now housed in a special museum devoted to the painter.

Or, unforgettably haunting to those who visit St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in the Egyptian desert, the humanity of the oldest surviving icons in the world, gazing serenely at us across the 1,400 years since they were painted.

Icons: Divine Beauty by Richard Temple (Saqi Books, £35)