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Iconos Sacros Handcrafted iconography

Golden Ring, Russia

Vladimir


56.1366° N  ·  40.3966° E

Virgin of Tenderness. The Virgin Mary holding the Child cheek to cheek

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.
Virgin of Tenderness, round panel
It is the same Vladimir Tenderness model, resolved in a tondo seventy centimetres across. Removing the corners removes the architecture of the icon and only the two heads remain: the piece gains intimacy and loses solemnity, and that is exactly the intention.

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