Travel icon depicting the Bogolyubskaya Mother of God, 19th century

Bronze casting with polychrome enamels

Height × Width: 11 × 9.5 cm Weight: 255.8 g.

This refined Old Believer icon reinterprets the prototype of the 12th-century Bogolyubskaya Mother of God, transforming the historical event into a celestial vision of profound spiritual intensity. At the center of the composition, the Virgin is depicted standing on a cloud supported by Archangels, an iconographic choice that emphasizes her role as Queen of Heaven and mediator between the human and the divine. She turns her gaze and hands upward, where from a corner of the sky the figure of Christ appears in the act of listening.Below, bearing witness to the origin of the miracle that occurred in 1157, stands Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky. Depicted with a halo and kneeling on the ground, the prince holds an open scroll: it is the text of his supplication, which Mary receives and visually presents on her own scroll directed toward her Son. The work is not only a memory of an apparition, but a solemn representation of intercession, where human prayer rises through the Mother of God to the source of Grace.This icon belongs to the group of Russian Old Believer icons, produced in series from the 17th century onward and characterized by a strict adherence to the canons of the Byzantine tradition. These artifacts, often made of bronze and sometimes enriched with colored enamels, were generally small in size and intended for private devotion. Their portability made them easy to carry and, if necessary, to conceal, thus meeting the religious needs of a community that, following the schism known as the Raskol, experienced periods of persecution by the official Russian Orthodox Church.