| Sumario: | This paper takes a critical look at the ikonic type of image, the "sacred image" as the "face" of the Eastern Christian tradition and the way it identifies itself, both aesthetically and ideologically. Is the union of the two inevitable and inseparable? Does this union still work? How and when did the ikon become the only possible artistic form of sacred representation for the Eastern Christian tradition? Has the ikon, with its origins in a form of art for which any mimetic (figurative and objective) representation becomes merely one among its many motifs—that is, in decorative art—has the ikon ever been art in the proper sense? Or has it merely been a type of visual practice, which, at some point, acquired independence and mobility, as did easel painting? Furthermore, how did this purely "designer" visual practice, this maniera greca , shape the aesthetics and even the artistic ethics of the Christian East?
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