**Originally Listed At $1700**

Eastern Europe, Russia, ca. 19th century CE. Exquisitely painted in egg tempera and gold leaf, an icon depicting Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk as a bishop facing the viewer and delivering a blessing with his right hand, wearing a panagia, vestments with a three-barred cross, and holding a crosier, his realistically delineated visage surrounded by a glorious halo featuring flowering foliage in blue, pink, and green faux enamelwork surrounded by white 'pearls'. Intricate Russian strapwork designs in gold leaf in turn surround the figure, and the entire icon is set in a glass-fronted wood kiot with an ornately carved and gilt liner of high relief grape clusters and six-pointed stars or petaled flowers, the wood kiot with a 'pediment' featuring a festoon of flowers flanked by curved leafy tendrils. The inscription on either side of the head of this saint (in abbreviated, Old Church Slavonic), reads "Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk". Size: 16.25" W x 23" H (41.3 cm x 58.4 cm)

Icons (icon means "image" in Greek) are sacred objects within the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. Found in homes as well as churches, these painted images depict holy persons and saints as well as illustrate scenes from the Scriptures. Some icons are encased in precious metal covers (oklads) adorned with pearls and semi-precious stones or glass-fronted wooden cases (kiots) like this example which is further embellished by the ornate gilt liner. Icons are not worshiped, but are instead venerated for their ability to focus the power of an individual's prayer to God. As such they are truly "windows into heaven."

Exhibited in "Windows Into Heaven: Russian Icons from the Lilly and Francis Robicsek Collection of Religious Art" at the Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina (December 20, 2003 through February 22, 2004) which presented highlights of one of the world's great artistic traditions through an extraordinary group of sixty-five 18th and 19th century Russian icons on loan from the private collection of Lilly and Francis Robicsek.

The “Windows Into Heaven” exhibition profiled a magnificent chapter of Russian artistry, the embrace of the Russian Orthodox faith of religious icons during the Romanov centuries. The Russian religious faith was an offshoot of Byzantine Christianity, which in 1054 parted ways from Roman Catholicism. Icons were and continue to be religious images created for veneration. As a focus for prayers and meditation for believers, icons serve as “windows into heaven.”

Provenance: ex-Francis & Lilly Robicsek Collection, Charlotte, North Carolina USA; exhibited in the Windows Into Heaven: Russian Icons from the Lilly and Francis Robicsek Collection of Religious art exhibition at the Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina (December 20, 2003 through February 22, 2004)

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#119618

Image shows nice craquelure and slight surface wear, thanks to the protection of the kiot. Gilt liner shows some surface wear and losses, particularly at lower end and to star/flower at bottom center, star/flower at right center, and leaves to lower right grape cluster. Kiot shows wear and losses commensurate with age. Wood backing shows separation and losses commensurate with age.