The Orthodox Church, on the contrary, has constantly refined in the direction indicated by the Fifth and Sixth Councils its art, both in its content and in its form, creating art that conveys in the images of the material world the Revelation of the Divine world, giving us a kind of key, a certain way of approaching the heavenly world, of contemplating it, of understanding it.

Whatever the direction that Western Orthodox art will take in the future, it will not be able to do without the basic guidance first formulated in this canon: historical realism, combined with the realism of Divine Revelation, expressed through certain forms corresponding to the spiritual experience of the Church.

[1] See: A. Grabar, Byzantine Iconoclasm. Paris, 1957, p. 79 (in French).

[2] The Rules of the Orthodox Church with the Interpretations of Nicodemus, Bishop of Dalmatia and Istria. St. Petersburg, 1911, vol. 1.

[3] Ibid.

[4] "Not a single Byzantine image of the lamb indicated by the finger of the Forerunner has come down to us," writes N. Pokrovsky (Monuments of Christian Iconography and Art, St. Petersburg, 1900, 29)

[5] P.G.98, 173. Cit. G. Ostrogorsky in: Kondakovianum Seminarium. Prague, 1927, vol.1, p.38.

[6] "Rules of the Orthodox Church...", p.596.

[7] Homily on the Transfiguration, ch. 12. P.G.96, 564.

[8] Now their authority is disputed and even simply rejected by some Western scholars. Thus, in the History of Councils by Haefele-Leclerc (Paris, 1909, vol. III, p. 577 [in French] we read: "It is true that the Life of Sergius and the Lieber pontificalis relates that the legates of Pope Sergius, having been deceived by the emperor, signed. But by these papal legates we must understand simply the papal apocrisiri who resided in Constantinople, and not the legates specially sent to participate in the Council."

[9] Op. cit. G. Ostrogorsky, ibid., p.43.