Icon “Mother of God” ( A.K.)

Description

Estonian

According to tradition, the picture painted by the evangelist Luke is considered to be the original example of the icons of the Mother of God. He is said to have painted a picture of Mary with the child on their dining table while visiting the Holy Family. According to legend, this image on a wooden base was taken from Jerusalem to Constantinople, now called Istanbul, in the 5th century by order of Emperor Theodosius II. None of the icons painted by the evangelist have survived to this day. His authorship must be understood in such a way that all subsequent images of the Mother of God are based on the image painted by the original Luke or are direct repetitions of it.

Based on this, several icon types of the Mother of God were formed in Byzantium, such as sitting on a throne, praying, showing the way (hodegetria), expressing tenderness (eleousa) and others.

In the Russian cultural space, the name of the icon of the Mother of God, in addition to its sacred meaning, also refers to the place of origin of the icon. Many Russian cities have given their names to icons, such as Our Lady of Vladimir or Kazan, etc. The eleousa icon, known in Russia as the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir, was probably painted at the beginning of the 12th century in Byzantium and first brought to Kiev. Later, the prince’s son Andrei Bogoljubski took the icon to Vladimir, hence the icon’s name.

An icon of the Mother of God painted by Luke was used in the Hodegon monastery, where the blind were cared for. That is why the icon was called a signpost. This symbolically means that Mary, the Mother of God, is a spiritual guide for a person in life. In Russia, the Byzantine Hodegetria icon became known as Our Lady of Smolensk. Many different variants of Byzantine models have been created in Russia. There are more than two hundred miraculous icons of the Mother of God alone. 

Additional information