Living Icons, Chapter 7

The seventh chapter of Living Icons is dedicated to Fr Gregory Krug, “Artist of the Icon, Theologian of Beauty.” It is a lovely and uncontroversial little chapter, dedicated above all to a description of Fr Gregory’s personality and of his iconography. Although Fr Plekon does not make special note of this, Fr Gregory was, unlike Fr Bulgakov, Mother Maria, and Paul Evdokimov, a member of the Moscow Patriarchate, which was the home of many of the most traditional theologians of the Parisian emigration, such as Vladimir Lossky, Leonid Ouspensky, Fr Sophrony (Sakharov), and Bishop Basil (Krivosheine). Indeed, Fr Gregory was a young member in the 1930s in the Paris Confraternity of St Photius and a close friend of Lossky and Ouspensky. While his icons are not entirely to my taste, his fidelity to Tradition and the canons of iconography are admirable. A refreshing and enjoyable chapter.