648 - Icon of the Vladimir Mother of God (Vladimirskaya), Eleousa, brass oklad, Russia, probably 19th c.

Icon of the Vladimir Mother of God (Vladimirskaya), Eleousa, brass oklad, Russia, probably 19th c. Wooden panel, tempera, oklad of brass, chased and punched, with remains of silvering. Depicted is the Mother of God of Tenderness (Eleousa, Russian Umileniye) in the type of the Vladimir Mother of God (Vladimirskaya): the Mother of God in half-length, her head inclined towards the Christ Child seated on her right arm, who presses his cheek against hers and lays his hand on her neck; her left hand raised towards the Child. The oklad covers the painted surface except for faces, hands and feet; above the heads a shared radiant nimbus, the maphorion of the Mother of God and the garment of the Child with chased drapery folds, the border with ornaments, crosses in the lower corner cartouches. The exposed paint layer in warm brown and red tones. The reverse shows the untreated wooden panel. Condition commensurate with age, oklad rubbed and dented, paint layer with blistering. 31.5x26.5 cm (HxW) The icon is a cult image of the Orthodox Church; its depiction follows a binding canon that prescribes posture, gesture and colouring. The prototype of the Vladimir Mother of God was painted in Byzantium in the early 12th century, came to Kyiv as a gift around 1131 to 1136, to Vladimir in 1155 and finally to Moscow in 1480; as the “Mother of the Russian Land” it is regarded as the most venerated image of the Mother of God in Russia and was copied countless times. Characteristic of the type are the cheeks of mother and child pressed together, the child’s arm around the mother’s neck and the visible sole of the child’s foot; the Greek name Eleousa, the Merciful, was understood in Russia as Umileniye, tenderness, and denotes, alongside the strictly frontal Hodegetria, the second basic form of the icon of the Mother of God. The oklad, in Russian also called riza, is a chased metal cover that protected the paint layer from candle soot and touch and was at the same time an expression of veneration; covers of brass or silver that conceal everything except faces, hands and feet have been widespread in Russia since the 17th century and reached their peak in the 19th century. The maphorion is the veiled mantle of the Mother of God, the nimbus the halo, which is here chased into the cover as a radiant crown.