In recalling the saints and their struggles, an icon does not simply represent the saint as he appeared upon the earth.  No, the icon depicts his inner spiritual struggle; it portrays how he attained the state where he is now, considered an angel on earth, a heavenly man.  This is precisely the manner in which the Mother of God and Jesus Christ are portrayed.  Icons should depict that transcendent sanctity which permeated the saints.  The Lord Jesus Christ is the union of all that is human and all that is Divine; and when depicted in an icon, the Savior must be painted so that we sense that He is a man, a real man, and at the same time, something more exalted than any man, that we not simply approach Him as we would approach a visitor or an acquaintance.  We should feel that He is One Who is close to us, our Lord, Who is merciful to us, and at the same time an awe-inspiring Judge, Who wants us to follow Him and wishes to lead us to the Kingdom of Heaven.  Therefore, we should not depict only the spiritual aspect of the saint, completely disregarding how he looked while alive on earth.  This would also be an extreme.  All saints should be depicted so as to convey their individual characteristics as much as possible — soldiers should be portrayed arrayed for battle; holy hierarchs in their episcopal vestments . . .  It is incorrect to depict bishops of the first centuries vested in the sakkos, for at that time, bishops wore the phelonion, not the sakkos.  This is not such a great error, for it is far better to make a mistake in what is physical than in what is spiritual, to ignore, the spiritual aspect.

 

  However, it is far worse when everything is correct in the physical sense, but the saint appears as an ordinary man, as if photographed, devoid of the spiritual.  When this is the case, the depiction cannot be considered an icon.  Sometimes undue attention is spent on making the icon beautiful.  If this is not detrimental to the spirituality of the icon, it is good, but if the beauty distracts our vision so that we forget what is most important — that one must save one’s soul, must raise one’s soul to the heights of Heaven — the beauty of the depiction is detrimental.  It cannot be considered an icon, but merely a painting.  An icon is an image, which leads us to be holy, God-pleasing person, or raises us up to Heaven, or evokes a feeling of repentance, compunction, prayer, a feeling that one must bow down before this image.  The value of an icon is that, when we approach it, we want to pray before it with reverence.  If the image elicits this feeling, it is an icon.