Moscow, April 3, 2026
foma.ru
Two of the most venerated icons of the Theotokos were transferred from the Tretyakov Gallery to the Russian Orthodox Church for free use today.
Though the Vladimir and Donskoy Icons legally belong to the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, they have been given to the Church to use for 49 years. Both icons are currently being housed in Christ the Savior Cathedral, the Russian Church reports.
Both icons rank among the most venerated miracle-working images of the Most Holy Theotokos in Russia.
The agreements provide for compliance with all necessary requirements to ensure the preservation of the sacred icons.
The Donskoy Icon will remain in Christ the Savior Cathedral until restoration work is completed at Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, after which it will be placed in the iconostasis in the monastery cathedral.
Under the terms of the transfer agreement, specialists from the State Tretyakov Gallery will have unimpeded access to the icons for regular inspection and monitoring of their condition, and the icons themselves will be housed in specialized display cases maintaining the necessary climate and excluding any risk of deterioration.
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The Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God was brought to Rus’ from Constantinople around 1130 as a gift to Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich, who placed it in one of the churches of Vyshgorod, a princely city near Kiev. In the mid-12th century, Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky, son of Yuri Dolgoruky, placed the icon in the Holy Dormition Cathedral in Vladimir. Veneration of the icon grew, and it gradually became known as the Vladimir Icon, after the city where it became celebrated for miracles and healings, before being transferred to Moscow in the 15th century. In Moscow, the icon was kept in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. After the revolution, in 1918–1919, it was cleaned by restorers from beneath thick layers of soot and later overpainting, and a decade later transferred to the State Tretyakov Gallery. From 1999, the icon was kept in the church-museum of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi, in a specially equipped display case.
The Donskoy Icon of the Mother of God entered the Tretyakov Gallery in 1930 from the State Historical Museum, to which it had been transferred by the Commission for the Uncovering and Preservation of Ancient Russian Painting. The commission carried out restoration of the icon, which had been removed from the local tier of the iconostasis of the Annunciation Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin in 1919. Researchers believe the icon was painted for the Dormition Cathedral of Kolomna, where it remained in the iconostasis until the mid-16th century, when, by order of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, it was transferred to Moscow. The icon gained widespread veneration at the end of that same century: during the invasion of Kazy-Girey, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich prayed before it in a field church, on the site of which the Donskoy Monastery was subsequently founded in memory of the Theotokos’ intercession and the withdrawal of the Crimean forces. As recorded in the monastery’s inventory, in 1593 a copy was made from the ancient icon—which remained in the local tier of the Kremlin’s Annunciation Cathedral—and subsequently placed to the right of the Royal Doors in the cathedral of the Donskoy Monastery, where it remains today.
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