ABSTRACT
This study has argued for the recognition in the exemplary icon and work of art of a characteristic modality that brings it to a state of hypostatic existence, a condition associated since Greek antiquity with the term enargeia. Our study of enargeia in the Christian image has taken an aesthetic and theological direction, a necessary prerequisite, as we have just shown with Zen precepts and painting, for any aesthetics concerned with the distinctiveness of the religious work of art both as an individual and as an iconographic type. We have opted for clarity where clarity was possible and due, but have also refrained from bringing the theophanic image under a rigid, closed formula, preferring instead to leave its specific form(s) to art and tradition.
