ИСТИНА

The long established stereotype of icons as flat decorative pictures seems today deeply unsatisfactory, at least in relation to Byzantium and medieval Russia, considering that within these contexts the icon was always understood as a spatial image, or an image-mediator. And because the ideal icon is not a flat representation, but a spatial whole, by no means does it differ exclusively from a religious picture constructed as a matter of principle according to different rules, but also from the later icon we are accustomed to, as a kind of conventionally depicted representation of some religious subject. There is an internal incompatibility between the flat picture, which still exists in our consciousness as the basic means of describing the world , and the spatial image which is constructed completely differently.