The following is taken from John B. Carpenter, “Answering Eastern Orthodox Apologists Regarding Icons,” Themelios 43, no. 3 (2018): 424
Did Luke Make
the First Icon?
It is a conviction of the Eastern
Orthodox Church that Luke the Evangelist painted the first icon, giving
posterity an eyewitness icon of Mary, the “Theotokos” (i.e., God-bearer). [39]
This reports is meant to root iconography at the very inception of the church.
However, this claim appears to be from the sixth century at the earliest. Later
authors, like Theodore Anagnostes (died after 527) supposedly reported about
Eudocia, the wife of emperor Theodosian II (408-450), sending to Pulcheria
(399-453) from Jerusalem the icon of “the Mother of God” depicted by “the Apostle
Luke.” [40] However, other sources claim that the earliest attestation of the
supposed icon of Mary by Luke is from Andrew of Crete (ca. 712-740). [41] There
is no evidence of the claim of icons by Luke in the early church. Augustine of
Hippo (354-430) wrote that no one knew the appearance of Jesus or that of Mary.
“For neither do we know the countenance of the Virgin Mary.” [42] It is highly
unlikely that a bishop as erudite as Augustine would be ignorant of the claim
of an eyewitness rendition of Mary if that claim had originated by his time.
Bissera V. Pentcheva concludes, “The myth [of Luke painting an icon] was
invented in order to support the legitimacy of icon veneration during the
Iconoclast controversy [8th and 9th centuries]. By claiming the existence of a
portrait of the Theotokos painted during her lifetime by the evangelist Luke,
the perpetrators of this fiction fabricated evidence for the apostolic origins
and divine approval of images.” [43]
Notes for the Above
[39] Martini writes “There is also
the tradition of Luke the Physician painting the first icon of the Theotokos
(the Virgin Mary) and the infant Jesus (the Hodegetria, which is currently
enshrined at a church on Mount Athos)” (in “Iconography in Ancient House
Churches”).
[40] Cited in Jalena Erdeljan, Chosen
Places: Constructing New Jerusalem in Slavia Orthodoxa (Leiden: Brill,
2017), 80n28. After this time and especially during the iconoclastic controversy,
insistence on this claim was common. For example, Andrew of Crete writes, “All
who (where) then told (that) Apostle Luke painted with his own hands the
Incarnated Christ and His spotless Mother and (that) Rome possesses the icons
of them in a glorious house. And they accurately say to exist (these icons)
also in Jerusalem” (De Sanctarum Imaginum Vemeratione, P.G. 97.1304B).
[41] David, “Another Icon Myth:
Icons Painted by St. Luke,” Icons and Their Interpretation, 27 October
2011, https://russianicons.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/another-icon-myth-icons-painted-by-st-luke/.
[42] Trin. 8:5 (NPNF1
3)
[43] Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons
and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University, 2006), 124.
The evidence against tradition is so overwhelming, one Eastern
Orthodox apologist, in a pretty lame attempt to respond to Carpenter’s article,
admitted that
I would agree wholeheartedly that
we do not have compelling evidence that Saint Luke painted any icons, at least
by secular standards. (Craig Truglia, "Answering
John Carpenter’s Aniconist Historical Arguments," August 23, 2020)
Further Reading
Answering
Fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox on Images/Icons
