For hundreds of years, after the conversion of Russia to Christianity a little over a millennium ago, sacred images called icons were displayed in the "beautiful corner" of every Russian Christian home. During the Stalin years, just owning such an icon was a sentence of death or life in prison. Yet the faithful preserved these works, and more than fourscore of them appear in an exhibit at the John Paul II Cultural Center in nearby Washington, D.C.

The show is entitled "Windows Into Heaven" and will continue until Aug. 17. It closes just two days after the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin which culminates the Russian Orthodox liturgical year. In September, the Nativity of the Blessed Mother, celebrated on Sept. 8, is the beginning of the new year and heralds the harvest season.

The 88 icons on display are all from the collection of James and Tatiana Jackson.

Icons are sacred paintings, and yet they are not wholly comparable to our western Christian works of art, typified by altarpieces, stained glass windows, and architectural sculpture. The icons themselves are considered sacred, and the correct term for icon painting is icon writing. The brochure issued by the center puts it succinctly: "When direct and precise words are insufficient, the images contained in icons reveal a hidden, truer, ever-present reality within our midst."

Visitors to the exhibit should consult this fine brochure as well as the wall texts, and allow themselves at least an hour to learn how to read the symbolism of the icons.

Russia came late to Christianity, long after the major relics of our Lord and his Apostles had become part of western European treasuries. Some icons, particularly those believed traditionally to have been painted by the Evangelist Luke, took on the quality of relics and were revered for more than what they represented.

Icon painting began in Constantinople, the capital of the eastern Roman Empire, about five centuries before the conversion of Russia in 988. Images had played an important role in the religion of ancient, pagan Greece and Rome. At first Christians believed the image to be a form of idolatry. But with the arrival of the Emperor Constantine and the Peace of the Church in the fourth century, Christian art changed profoundly. After all, Constantine had won his great battle of the Milvian Bridge under the visible "sign of the Cross."

As images of saints began to decorate the spots of sacred pilgrimages, they became controversial. During the seventh and eighth centuries, the period of many heresies regarding the nature of Christ, waves of iconoclasm (literally, image breaking) swept through the eastern Mediterranean region. Finally the Church denounced iconoclasm and upheld in 842 the doctrine of sacred images. But iconoclasm had destroyed countless precious art treasures in the meantime.

The icons of the Mother of God, following the type of the "Hodigitria" or the "Way-Shower" in Greek, or the classic "tenderness" icon where the Virgin Mary embraces the Christ Child cheek-to-cheek, are statements of the theology of the Incarnation. Just as God incarnate appeared on earth in the flesh, in his ineffable goodness lived with men and assumed the nature, the volume, the form and the color of the flesh, so it is right to make images of the incarnate God.

Although the best icon painters, including such anonymous artists as the maker of the delicate "St. John the Forerunner" (Russian term for the Baptist) of around 1700, or the painter of the marvelously decorative blue waves in "The Fiery Ascension of the Prophet Elijah" (around 1800), clearly had great joy in painting and consummate skill at their craft, they did not think of themselves primarily as trying to create something new. Artistic progress was not a goal. Rather, the ideal was to reproduce a prototype as faithfully as possible, just as the translator of sacred Scriptures would want to be as literally true as possible to the Word of God.

The icon painter made the sign of the cross and prayed in silence, then pardoned his enemies before he began his work. When finished, the painter would thank God for granting him the grace to paint holy images.

There was a great suspicion in early Christian art of three dimensional images, which too strongly reminded one of the pagan statues of gods. Many early saints had died as martyrs for refusing to bow down to such statues. Thus, the icons balance on a delicate thread between being sufficiently natural and specific to evoke the holy person who is depicted, and yet be heavily symbolic and otherworldly. The figures do not occupy architectural space which gives the illusion of three-dimensional reality. The Virgin Mary, exalted above all other human beings, is not to be shown with her feet touching the ground.

The icon is compactly composed from bottom to top to show a spiritual progression from the realm of matter (unreality, the earth) to the domain of pure spirit. The icons are progressively brighter in hue as they go up on the vertical surface of the panel. At the top of each icon is an indication of the divine, in the form of an inscription or often, a small image of God, usually the mandilion (the cloth imprinted with the Holy Face), God Almighty, or in later icons, the Trinity.

It is most appropriate that the John Paul II center should host this inspiring art show, because the Polish-born Holy Father has done more than any other leader in recent memory to promote ecumenical unity between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Church. To appreciate Russian icons in their unique beauty is to make a step toward appreciating the different spirituality of the Eastern and Latin churches.

The icons in this show are of a late period (since the 1660s) that has only recently attracted the attention of scholars. Most of them date from the time after Peter the Great brought westernizing influences into Russia. Hence, there are many striking departures from the earlier icon traditions, both in the style, as artists tried to show more of the volume and movement of the body as well as some theological content borrowed from the West.

It is not just the influence from west to east that the show reveals. It also reveals clearly the origins of much western Christian art.

Fast-forward from the ancient Mother of God icons (models for those in this exhibition) to Raphael's Madonnas, and we see the western, more humanized versions of the Hodigitria. Understanding the origins of these familiar pictures in icons helps us to touch their spiritual roots amid the more humanized forms, rather like the effect of hearing a snatch of Gregorian chant melody in the midst of a great Mass by Mozart or Beethoven.

The center is open Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday noon-5 p.m. It is located at 3900 Harewood Road near the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Admission is free and donations are gratefully accepted.