“According to the laws of optics the dimensions of objects decrease with distance and the lines of perspective cross each other at the horizon. Every painter knows this and uses it to suggest depth, a third dimension in only two. But the icon painter inverts this. His point of departure in perspective is not found in the illusory depth of the image which attempts to reproduce visible space, but before the image, in the spectator himself.”

The West can learn a great from thinking more about this. Too often in the West religious art is not approached from a place of theological depth. The East struggled deeply with religious art in their history, and they are richer for it!