Would this be classified as an icon?

George95 said:

I received this icon from my priest, would it be classified as an icon even though there are no halos?

https://www.bostonmonks.com/product_info.php/products_id/417

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I would say no. An icon is created by an iconographer who follows the strict standards of iconography of the Orthodox Church. The Romanovs were canonized by the ROC in 2000 so there are icons of the Royal Family...

This would be more along the lines of a version I would personally call an icon.




That monastery selling it also is a part of HOCNA - which I do not believe is a canonical Orthodox Church. I think it is a schismatic group that split off from ROCOR.

George95 said:

I received this icon from my priest, would it be classified as an icon even though there are no halos?

https://www.bostonmonks.com/product_info.php/products_id/417

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Just looks like a painting to me.

George95 said:

I received this icon from my priest, would it be classified as an icon even though there are no halos?

https://www.bostonmonks.com/product_info.php/products_id/417

View attachment 361037

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no, it’s a painting or photograph

George95 said:

What would you advise? It was in the church where he keeps the icons that he puts out for display.

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you could put it by your icons because it is a picture of saints, although I wouldn’t do anything with it for their feast. you can venerate it as well, just know it’s not an icon.

George95 said:

What would you advise? It was in the church where he keeps the icons that he puts out for display.

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ArmyMatt said:

you could put it by your icons because it is a picture of saints, although I wouldn’t do anything with it for their feast. you can venerate it as well, just know it’s not an icon.

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Indeed. The interesting thing about venerating paintings and photographs is that frequently now, we have photographs of newly glorified Orthodox saints, for example, St. Nicholas, St. Alexandra and their children, before they received crowns of martyrdom, in which our Heavenly Father lovingly received those who confessed Christ our True God before men and were confessed to Him.

Those who Lenin and his cronies in their cruelty sought to kill in a degrading way and erase from history, but in the stupid futility of their cruelty instead granted to them honor, glory, veneration, eternal memory and life everlasting, just as our Lord, God and Savior changed the Cross in His triumphant Passion and Resurrection from an instrument of murder into the Holy and Life Giving relic and icon of His defeat of death and harrowing of hades through which those detained as a result of the fall of Adam and Eve were released through the victory of the New Adam joyously perceiced by the new Eve, our most glorious lady Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary.

Thus we now have images of the Royal Martyrs who were among the first to be crowned with everlasting life as a result of the divine rejection of the cruelty of the self-worshipping Bolsheviks. And such images, and others like them of other new martyrs, confessors and glorified saints, such as St. Tikhon of Moscow and New York, St. Rafael Hawaheeny of Brooklyn and St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco are venerable and important. I recall on many occasions since becoming Orthodox hearing our clergy and apologists liken our veneration of icons to kissing the photographs and portraits of loved ones, and here we have photographs and portraits, which are not canonical icons but which are important effects of the lives of these saints.

Indeed I think in cases where the photograph or portrait of a martyred family like the saintly Romanovs belonged to that family it might be regarded as in the category of relics like clothing and personal effects of certain saints. I think the Orthodox Church should therefore seek to retain such items, particularly where they are original and actually belonged to the saints they depict.

I know that an Orthodox icon must comply with all the canons of painting and be consecrated in the church.

It doesn’t look like it on the surface; it looks more like a magazine cover or artistic rendition, and less like a canonical icon.

By the way regarding the consecration of icons, I don’t know if that’s the case; I have seen conflicting arguments on whether or not they require consecration. There is also the blessing of icons on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, one of my favorite feasts, the joyous beginning of the joyous fast and liturgical buffet of delights such as the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil, the Presanctified, Great Vespers and the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete that is the Great Lent, which traditionally ends with my favorite Orthodox liturgy other than the Eucharist, which is the Holy Unction service (consecration of Holy Oil and annointing of the sick or fasters with Holy Oil). This service is still celebrated on the last Friday in Lent in more traditional Orthodox churches such as many ROCOR parishes, and also in at least some Oriental Orthodox (Coptic Orthodox)