Isaac Fanous

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Isaac Fanous (Arabic: اسحاق فانوس), (born 1924), is an Egyptian artist and scholar, specializing in Coptic art.

Fanous is considered the father of modern Coptic iconography and the initiator of the modern renaissance in Coptic art. He has trained a number of other Coptic artists from abroad.

Fanous's contemporary school of iconography came about as part of a general renaissance of Coptic culture which began during the patriarchate of Abba Kyrillos VI in the years following the 1952 revolution. As wealthy patrons of the arts disappeared from Egypt's hitherto cosmopolitan art world they were replaced by the state, and the career of Fanous took off from the struggles and experiences of his time. That is to say, he became more keenly aware of his Egyptian heritage.

Fanous was one of the first students of the Institute of Coptic Studies founded in 1954 and he obtained his doctorate in 1958 . His two-year study grant in the Louvre in the mid- 1960s was a turning point in his career. He took the opportunity, while in France, to study icon painting under Léonid Ouspensky, under whose patronage he developed a passion both as artist and theologian. This would lead, eventually, to his developing a style that was become the new face of Coptic iconography in the mid-20th century.

Fanous chairs the Coptic Art department at the Institute of Coptic Studies in Cairo, Egypt.