Making an icon is pilgrimage of faith, says US Augustinian artist

Monday, 16 April 2012 12:42

Written by CNS

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ROME (CNS) -- The Philadelphia-born artist priest slowly inhaled, opened his mouth wide over an unfinished icon and released a long, belly-deep breath. Augustinian Father Richard Cannuli was warming the thick layers of a mixture of red clay, glue made from animal hide and a drizzle of honey that had been painted in the shape of a halo on a wooden panel. He then gently affixed a strip of 23-carat gold leaf to the dried clay. "I breathe three times so that I want to get my breath moist" and warm so the clay gets tacky enough for the thin gold leaf to stick to it, he said. It's like re-enacting creation, he said, when God breathed life into Adam -- a name that comes from the Arabic "Adeem" for "skin of the earth" or clay.

"God formed humanity out of clay and breathed life into the clay," he said. "The gold then represents the spirit of God that's entering the icon through the gold." Surrounded by powdered pigments, paintbrushes and gesso-covered birch plywood boards, Father Cannuli demonstrated the long, slow process of painting an icon in the ancient Russian-Byzantine tradition. He had just wrapped up a two-week icon-making workshop held in an empty side chapel at the headquarters of the Augustinians in Rome, just steps from St. Peter's Square. The precise 22-step process of making an icon is like a spiritual journey and a reflection of the Christian faith, he told Catholic News Service April 12. The icon is painted on wood, which represents the tree of the garden of paradise, Noah's ark of salvation and the wood of the tree Christ was crucified on, he said. The yolk and water used in the egg tempera represent life and baptism. When the icon is finished, it's blessed by a priest and rubbed with oils so "you confirm it, you chrism it," reflecting the stages of Christian spirituality, he said.