For this page design, the letter “C”, is composed of Natalie Goncharova’s twentieth century painting, Evangelist and two traditional Icon Paintings of the Virgin and Elijah Ascending on a chariot. The Evangelist emulates the style of the Russian Icon formula in an early twentieth century rendition. A continuing tradition of  Eastern European visual writing  is derived from iconoclasm. Influences  are traced to the Hellenistic period with  technopeignia writing (Theocritus), Greek Orthodox  Iconoclasm  and from the Byzantine era with tabulae iliacae or pattern poems (Theodoros  50 B.C. - C.E. 50). A modern example is   Simeon Polotskii's (1629-1680) Russian carmina figurata. According to Tatiana Nazarenko, "The "poezographical" compositions of [contemporary] Ukrainian practitioners Tetiana and Volodymyr Chuprynin are first and foremost perceived as refined works of graphic art. In each composition the letters are arranged in a sequence in perspective which spell out the definite word" (4).

Icons--Christian images—first appeared around the third century to promote Christianity. Using the earlier art forms of the mystery religions, the pagan Romans and Egyptian funerary painting, iconography and the basic compositional schemes became formally established by the Byzantine era. In 726, under Emperor Leo III, overzealous puritans, arguing that misinterpretation of icons lead to heresy, banned religious representational art in a systematic destruction of holy icons, known as the period of iconoclasm.

To fight the iconoclasts, the iconodules (the defenders or lovers of icons) sought to prove that veneration of icons was not idolatry. More than a controversy about religious art, Iconoclasm was a dispute about the creation and the salvation of the entire material cosmos. The Edict of 780, suspended persecution and iconography spread to other Orthodox countries: Bulgaria, Serbia and Russia, where the formulae became established and elaborated in local schools. The transition from religious painting to secular portraiture in the renaissance is a significant marker for the end of the medieval period of western culture. The new style of portrait painting came into prominence as the art of icon painting was discontinued. For history on Slavic visual writing see Tatiana Nazarenko's "The East Slavic Visual Writing: The  Inception of Tradition" in Canadian Slavonic Papers. (2001).
 http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~nazarenk/early_visual_writing.html

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