Religious image
Images flourished within the Christian world, but by the 6th century, certain factions arose within the Eastern Church to challenge the use of icons, and in 726-30 they won Imperial support.
[citation needed] The Iconoclasts actively destroyed icons in most public places, replacing them with the only religious depiction allowed, the cross.
"[1]Finally, after much debate at the Second Council of Nicaea, held in 787, the Iconodules, supported by the Empress, upheld the use of icons as an integral part of Christian tradition[citation needed], and the Western Church, which had been almost totally unaffected by the dispute, confirmed this.
The Eastern Orthodox Church fully ascribes to the teachings of the Seventh Ecumenical Council and celebrates the restoration of the use of icons after the period of Iconoclasm on the First Sunday of Great Lent.
[citation needed] Icons of Jesus depict him with a halo that displays three bars of a cross and the Greek letters which signify I AM (the Divine Name which God revealed to Moses at the Burning Bush).
The composition of an icon is planned with this veneration in mind, and the iconographer will usually portray his subject so that the right hand is raised in blessing, or if it is the saint's full figure is depicted, the right foot is visible.
[citation needed] Catholics maintained and even intensified the traditional use of icons, both printed and on paper, using the different styles of the Renaissance and Baroque.
Deities often bear a number of attributes associated with them, such as weapons like the discus Sudarshana Chakra of Vishnu,[3] mounts such as the peacock of Kartikeya,[4] sacred objects such as the lotus of Lakshmi,[5] as well as regalia such as crowns and necklaces, and traditional attires such as the sari.
[citation needed] However, the various divisions of Islam take different positions on the role of visual depictions of living (or once-living) creatures, including people.
There are numerous instances within the scriptures that describe the creation and use of images for religious purposes (the angels on the Ark of the Covenant, the bronze snake Moses mounted on a pole, etc.).
During the Late Antique period of Jewish history it is clear that restrictions on representation were relaxed considerably; for example, the synagogue at Dura Europas had large figurative wall paintings[citation needed].
It is also clear there was a tradition of painted scrolls, of which the Joshua Roll and the Utrecht Psalter are medieval Christian copies, none of the originals having survived[citation needed].
Some synagogue wall paintings contained over 80 various animals, including lions, unicorns, dragons, lion-headed mermaids, three hares, three intertwined fishes, Uroboros, elephants, deer, leopards, bears, foxes, wolves, squirrels, turkeys, ostriches and many others.
God himself was usually represented as a two-headed golden eagle in the center of the Sun, painted on the ceiling of the synagogue, and surrounded by the Zodiac circle.
Thomas Hubka has traced the style of decorative painting in the wooden synagogues to the medieval Hebrew illuminated manuscripts of Ashkenazi Jewry, and its meaning to the Jewish mystical literature, such as the Zohar and the works of Rabbi Elazar Rokeach.
