The Bogolyubovo Icon of the Mother of God, regarded as the earliest image of the Intercession

Into my mind comes the image of the Bogolyubovo Icon of the Mother of God, commonly called the oldest iconographic depiction of the Protection. Created between 1158 and 1174, the icon is held to be the first ever painted on Russian soil. The story of its making is traced to the apparition of the Mother of God to Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky on the River Nerl in 1155. On that spot Prince Andrey founded Bogolyubovo, and it was here, in the Church of the Nativity, that the icon was kept, winning veneration across all Russia at the end of the 17th century. But whichever icon one may revere above the rest, all our prayers today are for peace, for the saving of lives and for the Protection of the Mother of God