Sacred Geometry in Orthodox Icons: The Five-Pointed Star in Russian Tradition

The Russian iconographic tradition holds a place of particular significance for the five-pointed star. This star, symbol of Truth, Light and Man, was often used by sacred iconographers to derive the structure and cardinal points for faces as well as for half-bust figures of their representations. This repeated and structural use of the five-pointed star can be considered in a certain sense the characteristic key element of the Russian iconographic movement of the 14th and 15th centuries, in contrast to the French proportional theory of the 13th century. The passage from the brevilinear type of the sacred iconographic saint found in the art of Villard Honnecourt (13th century) to the longilinear type of Russian iconography of Novgorod coincides with the use of the Golden Number of Pythagoras or Golden Proportion whose value is 1.618, and the construction of the five-pointed star or pentagram recognized as the dynamic sign of Nature and Man. The five-pointed star allows giving a cosmic dimension to the head of the saint in the Russian icon. The Russian tradition thus uses the five-pointed star differently from the medieval French tradition to derive the proportions of the faces of the figures. While in fact in the French tradition exemplified by the face reported in Honnecourt's notebook, the five-pointed star remains internal to the face giving a sense of closure, in the Russian tradition, the generating star emerges from the face projecting towards the outside and launching the forehead and the figure itself. The use of the five-pointed star in Russian iconography between the 14th and 16th centuries is not in fact an episodic use but methodical and continuous. In the case of half-busts, for example, the fundamental lines of the same bust are dictated by a five-pointed star having the heart of the figure as center, which will subsequently be concatenated to a second one that will have the mouth as center and finally will be concatenated to the third that will have the forehead as center. In this way it is symbolized that the represented figure is in harmony with the divine Word in thoughts, words and works. The geometric structure of Rublev's Trinity reveals the masterful use of the five-pointed star and golden proportions. The central Angel's staff indicates the fundamental star used for construction, while the geometric analysis shows how multiple concatenated five-pointed stars determine the positioning of figures, the inclination of bodies, and the harmonic proportions that create the sensation of impalpable beauty and harmony characteristic of this masterpiece.