St Nicholas Icons at the Private Museum of Russian Icons. N.V. Zadorozhny (Moscow), I.A. Shalina (St Petersburg)
The clear concept underlying the icons collection of the recently opened Private Museum of Russian Icons enable us to single out a number of interesting monuments devoted to St Nicholas of Myra. The most ancient one is the well-preserved frontal full-length image of St Nicholas dressed in a modest long brown phaelonion and dark blue cassock that rarely occur in such images. Without a doubt, this icon of St Nicholas, discovered in 1967 in the village of Kyalovanga on the Onega River, is a masterpiece of the Rostov icon-painting of the middle and end of the 14th century.
The Private Museum of Russian Icons also owns a number of monuments depicting St Nicholas of Mozhaisk, the most significant of which is the image of the saint made at the end of the 16th century and depicting with almost documentary precision the precious decorations of the renowned miracle-making wooden statue of St Nicholas that was famous for the wonders it worked and for protecting the city of Mozhaisk.
The museum also boasts the icon called «Dormition of St Nicholas with the Icon of the Virgin of the Sign and the Saints Kozma and Damian, on the margins» which is a unique specimen among St Nicholas icons with no analogues among the known monuments. It bears the name of the painter: Ivan Yakovlev Sobol.
The hagiographic icons of St Nicholas are also amply represented in the collections of the Private Museum as well as the bust representations of St Nicholas painted in the Old Believers' icon-painting centers of Bryansk and Vyatka at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and also in the town of Kholyi. One more iconographic tradition: reiterations or replicas of the worshipped and miracle-making icons of St Nicholas, is reflected in a large number of monuments such as the rare palm-sized icon of «St Nicholas of Myra with the Saintly Princes Boris and Gleb».
A group of icons featuring St Nicholas the Miraclemaker in the Private Museum of Russian Icons are not only rare iconographic and artistic specimens of Old Russian icon-painting of the New Times but also make an important contribution to the present-day knowledge on the evolution of St Nicholas iconography in Russia during the 14th through 19th century.