Church history
Church Art: Icon, Temple, Chant
How iconography, church architecture and liturgical singing took shape.
The icon
An icon is not an illustration but a witness to the Incarnation (Seventh Ecumenical Council). The Byzantine canon (inverse perspective, gold background, hierarchy of figures) was received in Rus and developed by the schools of Novgorod, Pskov and Moscow (Theophanes the Greek, Andrei Rublev, Dionisy).
The temple
The cross-domed church is an image of the cosmos: the dome is heaven, the sanctuary the Kingdom of God. In Rus tented-roof and many-domed churches appeared.
Chant
Byzantine eight-tone chant, znamenny chant in Rus, part-singing polyphony from the 17th century, and Russian sacred music of the 19th–20th centuries.