Identifying icons and devotional art

Painted panels, brass travelling icons, and the grammar of sacred images.

Icons follow strict visual grammar: gold grounds, inscribed abbreviations (IC XC for Jesus Christ, MP ΘΥ for Mother of God), frontal saints identified by attributes. Panel icons are egg tempera on gessoed wood, often with a recessed central field; Russian brass travelling icons and folding triptychs are common small finds in the trade.

Age tells in construction: hand-planed panels with battens, craquelure consistent with the paint layers, darkened olifa varnish. Mass-produced 19th-century icons (printed on tin or paper on wood) are honest objects of their period but shouldn't pass as older; fresh gilt and artificial soot are warning signs.

Photograph inscriptions and attributes — they identify the saints and feast scenes, which is the identification. Note panel construction, size, and losses. Attribution to school and century is specialist work; describe what you see and let the image's grammar speak first.

From the guide library inside Collectors Catalogues, a free app for cataloguing antiques and finds with honest, museum-grade records.

More on religious objects

Seals and seal matrices — Reading a reversed device.

Identifying pilgrim badges and ampullae — Lead-tin devotional souvenirs.

Identifying scarabs and amulets — Egyptian protective forms.

Identifying cuneiform tablets — Wedge-marks in clay.

Identifying reliquaries and devotional objects — Containers for the sacred — from enkolpia to house shrines.

Identifying ushabti figures — The mummiform servants of Egyptian burials — and their million imitations.

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