A post on the New Liturgical Movement website by PETER KWASNIEWSKI :
…Given the iconoclastic half-century that has passed, it can never be amiss to remind ourselves of why the Catholic Church of East and West has always produced, loved, venerated, and defended “icons” or holy images of Christ, His Mother, and all the saints. Although in what follows I will be speaking primarily of icons in the usual sense of the term, the theological principles definitely apply to stained glass, relief carvings, sculptures or statues—in short, any art that seeks to bring the holy ones into our midst or, more properly, to bring us into contact with their glory.
In response to heretics who were rejecting and destroying holy images (the iconoclasts), the seventh Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church, called the Second Council of Nicaea (787), unambiguously…
Tags: Icons, Liturgical art
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Numbers 4 and 5 listed in the article is a big factors. It reminds me of an elderly priest who was a missionary to Japan most of his life telling me about a poem whose theme was that everything Gray (meaning earthly life here) turns to Gold (meaning heavenly and divine in the life hereafter). The poem was intended to give hope and inspiration to the faithful.
Gold represents being in Heaven in the presence of God – “the radiance of heaven.” People depicted on icons typically have thin, elongated noses illustrating the fact that you don’t need to breathe in heaven. Angels and other messengers, like John the Baptist have wings. Red is symbolic of divine life. Blue is symbolic of human life. White is reserved for either the Transfiguration or Resurrection of Jesus.
Jesus is painted as having a red undergarment with a blue outergarment depicting God becoming human. Mary is painted with a blue undergarmerment with a red outergarment depicting human being granted gifts by God.
what about the use of black? Why did funeral vestments change from black to white?