Russian Icon depicting the Dormition of the Mother of God, first half of the 19th century

tempera on panel

Height x width: 29.5 x20.5 cm

Icon on panel depicting the Dormition of the Mother of God (Uspenie Presvyatoy Bogoroditsy), one of the Twelve Great Feasts (Dodekaorton) of the Orthodox liturgical calendar, celebrated on 15 August according to the Julian calendar.
The composition depicts the Virgin lying upon her funeral bier, wrapped in the traditional dark red maphorion, while the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church gather around her body in an attitude of prayer and veneration. At the centre of the group stand three bishops, identifiable as the great Fathers of the Eastern Church, in accordance with the traditional iconographic model.
Behind the funeral bier, Christ appears within a large radiant mandorla, holding in His arms the soul of the Virgin, represented as a small swaddled child clothed in white garments, symbolizing her birth into eternal life.
In the lower section is depicted the well-known episode of the impious priest Jephonias, who, attempting to overturn the Virgin's bier, is miraculously stopped by an angel who severs his hands—an episode derived from the apocryphal accounts of the Dormition.
The gilded background, the gold-leaf halos, and the strongly hierarchical composition confer a profound liturgical solemnity upon the scene. Slavonic inscriptions along the upper border identify the subject, while the overall composition faithfully follows the iconographic models of nineteenth-century Russian icon painting.

The iconography of the Dormition constitutes one of the fundamental subjects of Byzantine and Russian sacred art, commemorating the passage of the Mother of God from earthly life to heavenly glory. Throughout the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, this subject was widely produced in the workshops of central Russia, particularly in the artistic centres of Moscow, Mstëra, Palekh, and Kholuy, for both private devotion and domestic iconostases.