People ask quite regularly why people in Byzantine and medieval art aren’t smiling or showing emotions, but the question reveals a completely philosophically captured notion of what Christian art is for.

The contemporary iconographic master, George Kordis, explains:

“The reason Byzantine painters and artists from the Classical period of ancient Greece were not especially interested in conveying emotional states is because emotions are temporary and therefore cannot characterise someone. For example people laugh and stop a moment later. They smile and stop smiling, or look saddened only for that look to disappear later on. Thus when we paint an icon there is little point in recording something that is completely temporary.

“Rather we focus on the person’s basic characteristics, the ones that always identify the person. This is precisely why there is no insistence on capturing emotions.

“This philosophy is very different from the one developed in western painting, at least from the Renaissance onward, especially in the Baroque period, where the depiction of emotions is of central importance and characterises an entire period in the history of art.”

(Segna di Bonaventura - Madonna and Child, c. 1325-1330)