The present volume by Chiara Cantelli (chiara.cantelli@tin.it) focuses on Florenskij's theology of the icon, approaching it in ways that differ from the traditional paradigm previously used to interpret it. According to Cantelli, Florenskij's is not a theology of the Invisible, but rather of the absolute Visible.
To demonstrate her thesis, Cantelli draws on some paradigms of the philosophy of art of Arthur C. Danto, whose conception of the work of art seems opposite and specular to that of the Russian philosopher and theologian. According to Danto, the work of art was born when it matured the awareness of its representative nature, when it established between itself and the reality it represents the necessary distance that enabled it to emancipate itself from the magic context in which it was rooted. For Florenskij, on the contrary, the specificity of art resides precisely in its roots, which connoted the relationship between the image and the reality it represents as one of actual, rather than fictional-metaphoric, sameness. The fact that art uprooted itself from that context does not represent an awareness of its own nature, but rather a disavowal of it.
What bears witness to that nature is the icon, which Florenskij approaches as God Himself in His visible presence. ÇRublevÕs Trinity exists, therefore God isÈ, Florenskij asserts. God is there, His presence is manifest. Indeed, it is so manifest as to become charged with such sensible evidence as to eliminate all distance between Himself and His image. It is not an image, but God Himself. This is a theology of the visible, then, and it is connected with a Christianity so rooted in the sensible as to become a much more radical form of paganism than the one articulated in IamblichusÕ and ProclusÕ late Neoplatonism, by which Florenskij's conception of the icon was influenced.