Iconography as Alternative Social-Religious Vision: Fr Zinon (Teodor)

Fr Zinon (Teodor) is widely regarded as one of contemporary Russia’s most important—and controversial—iconographers. This paper argues that his work offers an alternative social-religious vision to that which is dominant in the contemporary Orthodox Church in Russia. The paper explores, in particular, the opportunity that Fr Zinon had in 2012–13 to realize his theological and artistic vision most fully, when he designed and executed the icons for the lower church of St Petersburg’s Feodorovskii Sobor.

Fr Zinon believes that the general state of Russian iconography today reflects the dire situation of a post-communist Church that instead of realizing its creative potential, simply legitimates passive submission to the Church hierarchy and to the Russian state, as the Church did during the Synodal period. The Church’s aesthetic is in crisis. Icons, both printed and painted, have been reduced by the Church itself to consumer products that are of low quality and of dubious theological value.

In Fr Zinon’s contrasting vision, the mission of the Orthodox Church—and therefore the purpose of its iconography—is to draw the world into a vision of heavenly beauty. Through his iconography, he seeks to open up a space in which people experience divine transcendence and human solidarity, Fr Zinon sees his iconography as recovering the spirit of early Christianity, when Christians were a minority in a hostile society, as he believes they are again today.

The design of the lower church of the Feodorovskii Sobor most fully realizes what, for Fr Zinon, makes the church “the church.” While the upper church has a traditional, multistoried iconostasis that reaches to the ceiling, the lower church has only a low barrier. Its natural stone and metals give warmth to the space. For Fr Zinon, the purpose of this barrier is primarily practical, namely, to keep the altar area free for the priests to move about.

To the right and left of the altar area are icons of Christ the Savior and Mary the Theotokos, the central foci in every Orthodox church. Here, however, they are larger than life-size, and they “stand” to the side, leaving worshippers an unobstructed view of the altar, behind which a mural depicts Christ at table, breaking bread. Like the apostles and evangelists once did, the worshippers directly, and together, celebrate and participate in the communion at which Christ is the host.

Even though the current condition of the Russian Church discourages Fr Zinon (and he himself has been marginalized by the Church hierarchy), he believes that reform is inevitable, and that changes at the bottom may stimulate wider efforts. The Church’s arts at the level of the parish can point people toward this possibility. Iconography can help shape parishes to be loving communities in which all members know themselves to be valued and in which every person is invited and empowered to participate actively in worship and loving service to others, a genuine alternative to what Fr Zinon sees as the present stagnant church situation.

The paper draws from the author’s interviews with Fr Zinon in 2012 and 2019. The presentation will include powerpoint slides of his work.