The exhibition “Icon of the 12th century “Our Lady of Bogolyubskaya” opened in Vladimir. New discovery”

The exhibition “Icon of the 12th century “Our Lady of Bogolyubskaya” opened at the Chambers Museum Center of the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve. New discovery.” One of the oldest Orthodox shrines (the icon is revered as miraculous), a rare monument of art from the pre-Mongol period, an important artifact relating to the history of the formation of Russian statehood, appears before the public for the first time after a long restoration. The icon, transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1993, suffered catastrophically due to a violation of the storage regime and since 2009 has been inaccessible to either believers or museum visitors. But at the end of the current exhibition, the icon, miraculously saved by the restorers, can again be moved to the temple. From Vladimir – Igor Grebelnikov.

Strictly speaking, the restoration of the icon was completed back in 2016: all this time it did not leave the storage of the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve. A team of restorers from the Grabar Center, led by Alexander Gormatyuk (he also acted as curator of the current exhibition), came to save the masterpiece. This was followed by a period of monitoring the condition of the icon; along the way, taking into account foreign developments, a special showcase was developed for its storage and display: as a result, the icon was fixed inside a glass box, the angle of which could be changed.

The icon is exhibited in a separate darkened room, where the temperature and humidity conditions are strictly observed – you can feel it on your skin. The image is dotted, softly illuminated and slightly tilted back – the most gentle position for displaying the icon after fifteen years, during which it was placed horizontally on the restoration table. The icon can be clearly seen both standing and sitting on a banquette. Groups of up to ten people are allowed into the hall.

All this was preceded by the sad experience of the last stay of “Bogolyubskaya” in an active church – in the Assumption Cathedral of the Princess Monastery in Vladimir, where it ended up in 1993 under a temporary storage agreement between the museum and the diocese. Services were regularly held there, flower vases with water were placed next to the icon, a baptistery with a font was placed behind it, and the adequate operation of the climate display was carefully monitored. Even after the sensors placed inside the display case simply stopped working in 1998. Subsequent replacement of the display case did not help – the icon became covered with mold, the paint layer began to peel off and crumble. In 2009, the scandalous icon was returned to the museum for restoration, and at that time no one was sure that the monument could be saved.

It’s his condition. Even before that, the icon spent almost most of its “secular” existence in restoration workshops: in 1918, the icon became the first object of study by the Commission for the Preservation of Monuments under the leadership of Igor Grabar, which had just begun its work. From the sealed metal ark they then took out almost rotten, eaten away by shashel and a living beetle larva, and the remains of the images were so blackened that they could not be seen. “The Bogolyubskaya icon, having ceased to be a monument of art, is close to the moment when the object ceases to even be an object of archaeology,” the commission concluded. The restorers only had to fix what was left of the two-thirds destroyed monument.

Which, thanks to their efforts, was still preserved despite everything. The entire first hall of the current exhibition in Vladimir is dedicated to the ups and downs of the study and restoration of Bogolyubskaya. Not only is there an interactive panel with detailed information about the condition of the icon at different times, but also a rather touching series of etchings created by the last savior of the icon, Alexander Gormatyuk – something like a comic book covering its centuries-old history. Here is the scene of the service in the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the Bogolyubsky Monastery in the 12th century, here is the fate of the image after the collapse of this monastery in the 1720s (the icon then spent several years under stone rubble), and here are the very last years of work on its restoration. Nearby on the wall is a full-size copy-reconstruction of the icon, made by Gormatyuk based on the work done.

The desire of Soviet restorers and museum workers to see “Our Lady of Bogolyubskaya” (written, according to the current dating, in the years 1158–1160) at least approximately, in a roughly modeled form, can be understood – this is a monument with an exceptional history and a beautiful legend. In 1155, Prince Andrei Yuryevich, later nicknamed Bogolyubsky, disobeyed his father Yuri Dolgoruky, who occupied Kiev: he refused to rule at his side in Vyshgorod, and, taking from the convent there, even then a particularly revered, miraculous Byzantine icon of the Mother of God and the sword of the holy Prince Boris , headed with trophies to Rostov (after the death of his father he would inherit the Rostov-Suzdal land). But on the way, the unexpected happened: the horses stopped at the bank of the Klyazma and did not move any further. The prince began to “cry and grieve,” but at some point, “putting aside all fear and rejecting despair,” he began to pray earnestly; in response to his prayers, the Mother of God herself appeared and ordered the icon with her image to be taken to Vladimir, which he later did: now it is one of the most revered shrines of the Orthodox Church – the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God. At the site of the miraculous apparition, Prince Andrei Yuryevich decided to build a princely residence, a temple in the name of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, and ordered an icon with her image, which became the “Mother of God of Bogolyubskaya”.

She is depicted in full growth, half-turned towards the viewer, in a dark cherry cape-maphoria over a blue tunic, with her hands raised in prayer to the Son (much later a scroll with a prayer was added to her, for which the hand was copied). For the prince, this image became an expression of his claim to the personal protection of the Mother of God. Since then, both in the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality and in other Russian lands, the main churches began to be dedicated to the Mother of God (before that, according to the Constantinople model, they were consecrated in honor of St. Sophia – the Wisdom of God).

The icon was not only saved: the restorers of the Grabar Center managed not only to strengthen the image, but also to reveal fragments of the author’s painting, including the face and clothing of the Virgin Mary, hidden for centuries under layers of numerous records. One of the main discoveries was the fairly accurate similarity of the face of this icon with the image of the Mother of God of Vladimir: researchers believe that it was copied by a Russian master from a Greek model.

This is a sensation, but a scientific, secular sensation. The tone of the speeches at the grand opening of the exhibition, however, was desperately far from scientific. It was an extremely representative vernissage: speakers included the Chairman of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, Governor of the Vladimir Region, ex-Minister of Culture Alexander Avdeev, Vicar of the Vladimir Diocese Bishop Stefan of Kovrov, Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church Metropolitan Korniliy, General Director of the Grabar Center Dmitry Sergeev, director of the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum Ekaterina Pronicheva and its ex-director, under whom the restoration of the icon began, Svetlana Melnikova. Many said that not only Andrei Bogolyubsky acted as a unifier of Russian lands, but also, they say, the icon “Our Lady of Bogolyubskaya” itself. Almost all the speakers drew analogies with the present time, even expressing the conviction that the opening of the exhibition on the day of the start of the presidential elections in Russia was the providence of the Mother of God.

Scientific conscientiousness requires recalling, firstly, that the unification of the Russian lands did not quite work out for Grand Duke Andrei Yuryevich for the reason that he was stabbed to death by conspiratorial boyars in June 1174. Secondly, the fact that the restorers managed to preserve and reveal the beautiful sad face of the Mother of God of Bogolyubsk at all as Andrei Bogolyubsky saw it is a miracle. But now, contrary to the commandment of Scripture “thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,” “Bogolyubskaya” must again be given to a functioning church.

So far they say that not immediately, that for the next two years – this is exactly the period allocated for the current exhibition – “Our Lady of Bogolyubskaya” will be under the reliable supervision of specialists. The museum hopes that this display format will suit the church and believers and that the icon will remain within its walls as long as possible. But the blatant treatment of Rublev’s “Trinity”, which, contrary to all promises, was taken from the Grabar Center to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, does not greatly support these hopes.