New Packet: Icon of St. Thomas Aquinas

New Packet: Icon of St. Thomas Aquinas

Not long before we closed our local icon studio in Lafayette because of the start of the covid pandemic, one of our students requested that we paint an icon of St. Thomas Aquinas. Her son was getting his masters’ degree in history and philosophy, and he had a particular love for the writings of St. Thomas, the 13 th century Dominican friar and priest who is recognized as one of the most influential theologians of the Roman Catholic Church and the greatest thinker of the medieval period. Given the title of Doctor of the Church, he is often referred to as the Doctor Angelicus, the one who spoke with the tongue of the angels.

In designing our icon of St. Thomas, we studied the existing imagery and iconography of the saint. We decided on a simple frontal image that incorporated a scroll and a quill, indicating his work as a scholar. He is dressed in the black and white of the Dominican habit. The old iconography of St. Thomas often included a sunburst, indicating that he was a shining light to the darkness of the middle ages. We also noticed that the old images showed St. Thomas with a receding hairline. We incorporated both of these features in our icon. Finally, St. Thomas was said to have been somewhat fat, so we drew him as a healthy, chubby saint rather than as an ascetic!

St. Thomas Aquinas

We had just started painting St. Thomas in the studio when covid hit. We finished St. Thomas

online as I and my local students together discovered the wonderful world of web cams and

Zoom and the intricacies of teaching and painting icons remotely. The current online classes

developed from that starting point.

This packet of St. Thomas includes all of the instructional material from the original class: the

instructional text (14 pages), step photographs (14 pages), color placement guides (4 pages), a

color formula sheet, 2 pages of line drawings, a page of various short sayings attributed to St.

Thomas, and a reflection page. It also includes a list of pigments and supplies.

As with all our packets, this packet is designed for those who have previously studied with the

Prosopon School of Iconology or its affiliated teachers. You must be familiar with the painting

techniques and terminology of the school to fully understand the instructions in the packet. If

you are new to icon painting, please visit our Classes page and consider enrolling in our Paint

Mixing and Pigments class, followed by one of our 9-week beginning series classes.