THERE IS religious turbulence in the village of Lythrodontas.
The decision to have an iconographer paint various members of the community, including himself holding his paintbrush, inside the walls of the church has angered some in the village.
Painted on the walls is also a sponsor of the Ayios Therapontas church, his wife and parents, the two priests and the two cantors of the church, all awaiting the second coming among those being judged by God amid saints and angels.
Moisis Giorgiou, the community leader of Lythrodontas, told the Cyprus Mail that some people were arguing that it was wrong to paint living members of the community in the church.
“There are some people who are against the iconography and there are some people who are in favour. The people that are against the iconography believe that the people painted in churches should not be alive.”
Giorgou added that the whole problem could have been avoided had the government approved a request to have one of the streets named after somebody from the village.
“The whole saga began after I wanted to have one of the street signs in the village named after somebody who has done the community here a great service. However, the government told me that they wouldn’t allow a street to be named after somebody who was still alive. So instead some people decided to have the individual painted on the walls of the church as a sign to commemorate them and that’s when all the trouble began.”
Stelios Christou, who is an icon painter from Kormos in Nicosia, says that there is no law against donators painted onto the walls of the church, adding that the real worry should be people trying to interpret some people as saints, something he added was not the case in Lythrodontas.
“Although it’s not a standard practice, it does happen and there is nothing forbidding it providing that they are not in the same picture with saints and angels. I personally have never painted a donator to the church but there are some pieces in a few places around the island and I think there is such an icon on Mount Athos in Greece.
“What is wrong is depicting somebody as saint if he or she has not been approved by the church. The procedure is usually to wait 50 years after the person has died unless that person has performed miracles”.
Archbishopric Representative Athanasios Papageorgiou, an expert on Byzantine art, called for a committee to be set up of supervisors dealing with architectural design and church interior design.
The aim of the committee should be to monitor iconography such as the work done in Lythrodontas but also to tackle matters such as Catholic saints being portrayed in Orthodox churches.
He added sponsors began appearing in icons and frescos in the seventh century in Rome and in Cyprus from the 13th century.
Bishop of Morphou Neophytos said the painting in Lythrodontas appears to show how some churches were straying away from the initial ideology of the Orthodox Church. He added that the argument was evidence of the predominance of vanity in the modern world.
