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Icon: Bogolubskaya Mother of God

The Mother of God appears full length making a gesture of supplication to Christ and opens a scroll with a prayer. Behind her is the monastery of Bogoliubovo.

Bright gold is used in the background and in the vestments. In the upper border an extended Deisis.

The original or prototype for the icon was painted in 1157 for Grand Prince Andrei I of Vladimir, commonly known as Andrei Bogolyubski (Russian: Андрей Боголюбский, “Andrei the God-Loving”), to commemorate the vision he received of the Mother of God.

According to Orthodox tradition, Prince Andrei Bogoliubski, on a journey, had with him the wonderworking icon the Virgin of Vladimir which the patriarch of Constantinople had sent as a gift to his father Grand Duke Yury Dolgoruky of Kiev twenty five years earlier. Approaching the city of Vladimir, the horses carrying the icon suddenly stopped and nothing could persuade them to move on. The prince, sensing a miracle, entered his tent to pray. At that moment the Virgin appeared to him holding a scroll and instructing him to build a church for the icon at that very place. Prince Andrei did as he was bid, he also ordered an iconographer to paint an icon of the Virgin as she had appeared to him: the Bogolubskaya icon.

Over the centuries numerous copies of the icon were made that are venerated in Russia and in Orthodox churches throughout the world but the original survives and can be seen today in the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum.