Icon depicting Our Lady of Smolensk, 19th century

Bronze casting with polychrome enamels

Height × Width: 28 × 24.5 cm Weight: 2275 g.

An image of the Virgin Mary, which takes its name from the city of Smolensk. Tradition holds that the icon was used to bless the streets of Constantinople by Constantine IX Monomachos on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter Anna to Prince Vsevolod of Yaroslavl, and that it arrived in Russia in the 11th century. Vladimir II Monomakh solemnly donated it to the city of Smolensk in the 12th century, and the image was placed in the Cathedral of the Dormition, but it was later lost during the Second World War.This icon belongs to the group of Russian Old Believers’ icons, produced from the 17th century onward and characterized by a strict adherence to the canons of the Byzantine tradition. Unlike the more common small metal icons intended for private devotion and travel, this example belongs to a slightly larger typology, designed for a more stable devotional use and for placement in the domestic sacred corner or in communal prayer spaces. These artifacts, often made of bronze and sometimes enriched with colored enamels, while still retaining a degree of portability, were less “travel icons” and more suited to continuous and visible veneration.