Includes bibliographical references and index.

The role of time in pictorial art -- The role of time in the visual arts : seeing a picture in the twinkling of an eye -- The doctrine of the purity of art -- The problem of pictorial time in the icon : Florensky and remembering things that happened the week after next -- The problem of time in the pictorial arts Bakhtin's chronotope -- On reverse perspective : a critical reading -- Implications of the term reverse perspective : reverse of what? -- First stage : Florensky -- Second stage : Zhegin -- Third stage : Boris Uspensky -- An alternative view : Karl Doehlemann -- Registering presence in the icon -- The cult of images and Eastern Orthodox identity -- The western position : a critical reappraisal -- Icon and relic -- Real presence in the image -- Classical antique sources -- Christian sources : Byzantine theology of the image -- A modern view : the icon as symbol in Florensky's writings -- Seeing the world with the eyes of God : an alternative explanation of reverse perspective -- A new definition of reverse perspective as a prerequisite for the present hypothesis -- The cubist background -- The theosophical background -- Classical Greek sources on divine eternity -- Christian sources on divine eternity -- Theology through liturgy -- Theology through the arts -- The present hypothesis in context -- Leibniz and the way God sees things -- Schopenhauer and art as a repetition of eternity -- Worringer's eternalization of the object.