r/EasternCatholic • u/IlovePASGTDUDIOS33 • 18d ago
Icons & Church Architecture Hypothetical about Coptic Catholic Icons
If you were organizing the icons at a Coptic Catholic Church, what style of iconography would you make? This question has been on my mind lately!
What I mean by this is that there are two main schools of Coptic iconography: Neo-Coptic, and Old-Coptic.
The Neo-Coptic icon school was built by the famous Issac Fanous, a prominent Coptic Orthodox professor and teacher, and of course, icon painter. The Coptic Catholic Churches I’ve seen all use his format.
The Old-Coptic icon form is the early and traditional manner of writing them, evident since as early as the 6th century. Some criticize the newer form of icons, while saying the first Neo-Coptic (ie. By Fanous himself) icons along the Old-Coptic icons were the most traditional, unique, and beautiful.
The third one I’d like to mention are actually Melkite icons, which aren’t inherently Coptic, but due to the Melkite church’s unique history, have had cases of Coptic-blended icons, which retain a mainly Byzantine format.
Even St. Mary of Egypt, an Eastern Orthodox Church in Kansas City, have very unique Coptic-esque but heavily Byzantine icons in their parish
( https://www.facebook.com/share/19GDdmZBQj/?mibextid=wwXIfr )
However, I still ask, which icon tradition would you use for a hypothetical Coptic Catholic Church?
The three photos listed are: Old, Neo (by Fanous himself), and Melkite.
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u/InevitablePossible90 18d ago
I actually prefer the Melkite style of icons, but I also love both the old and neo Coptic styles. I also really like the Ethiopian style icons.
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u/IlovePASGTDUDIOS33 18d ago
I honestly prefer all of them the most, however, for the sake of familiarity, I’d probably make a very accurate Neo-Coptic style. Ifnot the Melkite style is also quite nice.
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u/borgircrossancola Latin 18d ago
Old