Golden Ring, Russia
Vladimir
What is there today
Vladimir was the capital before Moscow and keeps two twelfth century cathedrals with frescoes by Andrei Rublev. The panel that made the city famous is no longer there: it was taken to Moscow in 1395 and is now kept in a church attached to the Tretyakov gallery, in a climate controlled case.
Why this image comes from here
The image arrived from Constantinople around 1130, and in it mother and son touch cheeks, a gesture earlier Byzantine painting did not allow itself. Russia adopted that gesture and made it its way of painting the Virgin, to the point that the type carries the city s name.
Pieces from this place
- Virgin of Tenderness
- This gesture has its own name in the Christian East and one panel that fixed it for good: the one that travelled from Constantinople to Vladimir in the twelfth century and that the whole of Russia took as its own.