The State Historical Museum Begins the First Stage of Restoring a Unique Nineteenth-Century Icon, "The Saviour of Smolensk with Saints Sergius of Radonezh and Varlaam of Khutyn Kneeling", from Saint Basil's Cathedral

The State Historical Museum has begun the first stage of restoring a unique nineteenth-century icon, "The Saviour of Smolensk with Saints Sergius of Radonezh and Varlaam of Khutyn Kneeling", from Saint Basil's Cathedral. The icon has been handed over to the Grabar restoration workshops.

The icon of the Saviour of Smolensk on the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin was placed there in gratitude for the capture of Smolensk in 1514, during the Russo-Lithuanian war. The icon was venerated as miracle-working. This most ancient iconographic type dates from the age of Ivan the Terrible. The Saviour is shown as Pantocrator, frontal and full-length, his right hand raised in blessing and the Gospel in his left, with two saints, Sergius of Radonezh and Varlaam of Khutyn, kneeling at his feet.

Specialists of the Historical Museum believe that the Cathedral of the Intercession preserves a particularly venerated nineteenth-century copy of the icon of the Saviour of Smolensk above the Spassky Gate of the Moscow Kremlin, which dates from the early sixteenth century:

"The research now under way will allow us to confirm definitively our supposition that this icon comes from the Spassky chapel, which was built to the right of the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin at the beginning of the nineteenth century", says Alexey Levykin, Director General of the Historical Museum.