The revival in icon-painting that Egypt witnessed from the mid-seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth is closely tied to the movement of restoring, conserving, and establishing churches and monasteries throughout the country. The building and conservation of churches and monasteries has long been a sensitive subject in Egyptian culture under the Islamic state. Egypt and other Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire underwent, as of the mid-seventeenth century, important social and political transformations. As a result, religious scholars were increasingly expressing more tolerant opinions on this matter and allowing for the restoration and construction of Coptic churches and monasteries throughout Egypt, with the approval of the ruling political authorities. This chapter carries out a careful study of the production of icons before Yuhanna al-Armani's time could which provides a better understanding both of his own work and of the many unsigned works by unidentified painters.