*Against Iconoclasm

What icons are, and why icons matter

That’s a portrait of the Mother Of God, Softener of Evil Hearts, which hangs in the Russian State Gallery in St. Petersburg. It was painted in 1913 by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. I loved it so much when I first saw it that I bought a canvas print, and had it framed.

It is a work of art; it is not an icon, despite the iconographic pose of the Virgin. Icons, in …