True iconography is opposed to the ideas that art should copy nature, or should express the imagination or personality of the artist, or the spirit of his time. Its goal is to give the most effective expression to the universal truths and values of Christian religion; to lift the contemplator to the apprehension and experience of them; to transform and sanctify him. To this end the icon painter adheres faithfully to the classical Christian tradition of sacred painting, the Byzantine, employing its consecrated archetypes and techniques, avoiding arbitrariness and improvisation, as well as all that is vague, superfluous, subjective, sensual-in general, everything which tends to keep the contemplator of art objects chained to a lower level of being. The art of authentic iconography is eminently deliberate, clear, precise, simple, objective, universal, spiritual.
– Fr. Constantine Cavarnos, hieroschemamonk, iconographer, author. Byzantine Iconography Theologia, 1972
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