Printed icons are absolutely fine. You don’t need a hand-painted icon to have a legitimate, venerable image in your home or even in a church. What matters isn’t how the icon was made but whether it’s theologically correct.
This surprises people sometimes. We’ve all seen those gorgeous hand-painted icons with egg tempera on wood, gold leaf catching the light, layers of careful work by an iconographer who prayed and fasted while creating it. Those are beautiful and traditional, and there’s something special about them. But the Church has never taught that an icon must be hand-painted to be a real icon.
What Makes an Icon Valid
Here’s what actually matters: Does the icon accurately depict Christ, the Theotokos, or the saints according to the Church’s tradition? Does it follow the theological and compositional rules that have been handed down? Is it something that could be used in a church service without causing confusion or teaching something false?
An icon isn’t holy because of the materials or the technique. It’s holy because of who it depicts and because it conforms to the truth the Church proclaims. Father Thomas Hopko used to teach that icons are “dogmatical art.” They’re theology you can see. They proclaim the Gospel in color and form just as surely as we proclaim it in words.
So a printed icon that accurately shows Christ with the proper inscriptions, the right proportions, the traditional composition? That’s a real icon. You can venerate it. Your priest can bless it. It can hang in your icon corner at home. A poorly done hand-painted icon that gets the theology wrong or adds weird personal touches that don’t belong? That’s actually more problematic, even though somebody spent weeks painting it.
The Practical Reality
Let’s be honest about where we live. Southeast Texas isn’t exactly overflowing with trained iconographers. If you wanted to commission a hand-painted icon of St. Michael for your home, you’d probably need to find someone online, wait months, and spend several hundred dollars or more. That’s wonderful if you can do it. But most families starting out in Orthodoxy can’t.
Printed icons have made it possible for Orthodox Christians everywhere to have images for prayer and veneration. The Ancient Faith Store sells them. Monastery Icons sells them. Your priest probably has some in his own home. They’re not second-class icons. They’re just icons made with modern printing technology instead of a brush.
Think about it this way: we venerate the Gospel book during the Divine Liturgy, right? We kiss it. We process with it. We treat it with reverence. But nobody worries whether that Gospel was hand-copied by a monk with a quill or printed at a publishing house in Indiana. What matters is that it contains the Word of God accurately. Same principle applies to icons.
When Hand-Painted Matters More
That said, there are times when hand-painted icons are especially appropriate. If a parish is building or renovating a church, the iconography for the iconostasis and walls should ideally be hand-painted. There’s a permanence and a beauty to that work that fits the space. Icons that will be venerated by hundreds of people for generations deserve that kind of attention.
And if you develop a relationship with iconography over the years, if you grow to love a particular saint or find yourself drawn to commission something specific, a hand-painted icon can become a treasured part of your spiritual life. There’s nothing wrong with wanting that. The iconographer’s prayer and care do matter, even if they’re not technically required for the icon to be valid.
Getting Your Icons Blessed
Whether your icon is printed or painted, you can bring it to church and ask your priest to bless it. There’s a short service for this. It’s not that the icon isn’t holy before the blessing, God created the materials, after all, and he’s present in his creation. But the blessing sets the icon apart for sacred use and invokes God’s presence in a particular way.
Some people get nervous about this. They worry their printed icon from Amazon isn’t “good enough” to bring to Father. Don’t worry about that. If it’s a proper Orthodox icon, bring it. Your priest will be glad to bless it.
Start with what you can afford and what’s available. A printed icon of Christ and the Theotokos for your home is infinitely better than no icons at all because you’re waiting until you can afford hand-painted ones. You can always add to your collection over time. What matters is that you’re learning to pray before the faces of those who’ve gone before us, learning to live surrounded by the communion of saints. The printing press doesn’t prevent that from happening.
