Bonovas Nikolaos, Religious paper icons in the Athonite archives
Researchers only began to show an interest in religious paper icons in the last few decades. Material from private and monastic collections became a subject of research and has been displayed at highly successful periodic exhibitions supplemented with scientiic catalogues. he two-volume publication by Dori Papastratou, titled ‘Χάρτινες Εικόνες. Ορθόδοξα Θρησκευτικά Χαρακτικά 1665–1899’ and published in Athens in 1986, remains a work of unsurpassed research in this ield. It is clear from all the above that conditions are ripe for researchers to tackle the new and largely unknown artistic genre of religious paper icons. he research involves woodcuts, copper-plate engravings and lithographs, mentioned in the order in which they emerged, and contributes to an understanding of painting in the late post-Byzantine period and more recent years (18th to 20th c.), through the study of iconography and the activities of copper-plate engravers and printers of paper icons. Paper icons were created as prints and were preliminary versions or ‘tools’ that painters used. Our knowledge of paper icons and the conditions under which they were produced in the monastic state of Athos has been substantially enriched by the archival material kept safe in the Athonite libraries. he material consists of ledgers with the monasteries’ annual budgets, correspondence between monks and monasteries, and personal records. We can therefore determine with precision the founding dates and scope of the Athonite engraving workshops, the names of their members (who supplied engravings of monasteries and sketes) and the price of each work of art. Our research has begun in 1998, and so far it can be concluded that: a) there is an inequality in the surviving material in terms of preservation and distribution, b) the Vatopedi Monastery produced 514,685 paper icons from 1819 to 1923, followed by the Xeropotamou Monastery with 67,020 (1816– 1914), Pantokratoros with 22,146 (1809–1875), Simonos Petra Monastery with 17,000 (1849–1902), Agiou Pavlou Monastery with 2,546 (1818–1852), Dionysiou Monastery with 2,263 (1831–1855), and Xenophontos Monastery with 1,285 paper icons (1802–1835). We believe that the wide circulation of paper icons is linked to Athos’ far-reaching spiritual inluence, the large number of believers that locked to its monasteries from far and wide, and to the monks’ frequent visits to Orthodox communities outside Athos. his research is still in progress, its aim being to study all the monasteries, sketes and cells on Athos so that a complete picture can be formed.
