I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I just can’t seem to appreciate icons. Every other Catholic tells me they’re magnificent, I’ve studied the symbolism, but somehow they just don’t do anything for me. The religious art of the Renaissance, Baroque, and even the nineteenth century stir me more because they look more real.
Part of it I think stems from a difference in goal for the art. The renaissance art tended to try to realistically capture a scene from a story, that is what appeals to you the realism. The earlier iconography tended to tell a story with picture, every little thing in the picture was added to relate a part of a story even combining many unrelated items.
The iconography is a vestige of a pre phonecian written language approach. You see it in the Eastern art of the Chinese etc. which likewise told a story, in the Egytpian pictoral story telling on their walls, in the south american glyphs on their walls and art etc.
It can be hard for our current minds to understand. You “read” the picture in iconography.