08. Our Lady of Smolensk

Click on picture to see a bigger version

About this icon: second half of the 19th century. Latgalia. Wood, lewkas, tempera. Size: 35,9x31x2,5 cm.

The most stern and solemn variant of the Virgin Hodegetria. Its chief distinction from an Iconography point of view is that the Christ-Child is depicted full-face. The name comes from the fact that the Icon, which legend says was brought to Russia from Byzantium, was kept from the twelfth century in the Assumption Cathedral in the city of Smolensk. In the fifteenth century the Icon was in Moscow for a time, kept in the Annunciation Cathedral in the Kremlin, but in 1465 it was returned to the people of Smolensk. Images of the Virgin of Smolensk became particularly popular in the sixteenth century after Smolensk was incorporated into the Moscovite State and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Smolensk was constructed in the Novodevichy Convent outside Moscow.

Very good condition.

This icon has collection significance.

Price: 1300 Euro

Click on picture to see a bigger version