Our Lady of Vladimir

Vladimirskaya: the name that came from a city

The icon bears not the name of its subject, but that of the city which long kept it: Vladimir, capital of the principality of Vladimir-Suzdal, in north-eastern Russia. It is therefore called in Russian Vladimirskaya Bogomater — “the Mother of God of Vladimir” — and, in English, Our Lady of Vladimir or the Virgin of Vladimir.^[5]

This place-name recalls an essential truth: a famous icon is almost always attached to a sanctuary and to a history. The Vladimirskaya is not merely a beautiful painting; it is a figure of history, a witness that was moved, defended, implored, and whose displacements mark the great moments of a people.

Theotokos: the Mother of God

The subject, however, is universal: the Mother of God, in Greek Theotokos (Θεοτόκος, “she who gives birth to God”). This title, defined at the Council of Ephesus in 431^[6], governs all Byzantine Marian iconography: Mary is never represented alone, for herself, but always in reference to Christ. On the immense majority of icons, she carries the Child, shows Him, presents Him — she is the way to Him.^[7]

On Our Lady of Vladimir, as on all Marian icons, two abbreviated Greek sigla frame the figure: MP ΘY, for Mētēr Theou, “Mother of God”. The inscription is no detail: for the Byzantine tradition, an icon truly exists only once named; the inscription identifies and authenticates the person represented.

Eleousa: the type of tenderness

From the art-historical point of view, Our Lady of Vladimir belongs to a precise iconographic type, that of the Eleousa (Ἐλεοῦσα, “the Merciful”, “the Compassionate”), also called Glykophilousa (“of the sweet kiss”): Mother and Child are cheek to cheek, in a tender embrace, the Child raising His arm toward His Mother’s face or neck.^[8][9]

The type of tenderness does not set maternal sweetness against majesty: it unites them. The embrace speaks of the Mother’s love; Mary’s grave gaze, turned toward us and not toward the Child, speaks of her foreknowledge of the Cross.

This type stands apart from other great families of Marian icons found throughout the Byzantine world:

Our Lady of Vladimir has become, for the Slavic East, the supreme example of the Eleousa — to the point that countless copies of the same type have taken, in Russia, the generic name of the “Vladimir type”.^[10][11]

Cheek to cheek: a composition of intimacy

Everything in this icon is ordered to a single gesture: the contact of the two faces. The Child, seated on His Mother’s right arm, reaches up toward her, passes His arm around her neck and presses His cheek against hers. Mary inclines her head, enfolds Him with her arm, yet does not yield to mere effusion: her face remains grave, almost sorrowful.^[12][13]

Art historians have often stressed this inner tension: the composition blends the tenderness of the Nativity with the sorrow of Calvary. The Mother knows. She holds against her the child she will have to see die, and her gaze, which is not for Him but for us, makes us witnesses of this mystery.^[14]

The gaze and the gesture

The most striking detail is the parting of the gazes. The Child looks at His Mother; the Mother looks at the one praying. This circulation of the gaze makes the icon a true scene of prayer: the Child turns toward Mary, Mary turns us toward the Child. The icon is not a picture contemplated from outside; it is a window in which a gaze is exchanged, according to the founding principle of all Eastern iconography (see The Theology of the Icon).

The signs of the maphorion, the bare feet, the gold

Several iconographic details, laid down by tradition, carry a precise meaning:

• the three stars embroidered on Mary’s veil (maphorion) — on the forehead and both shoulders — figure her virginity before, during and after childbearing;^[15]
• the bare feet of the Child, the sole of His foot turned toward the beholder, recall His real humanity, His true flesh;^[16]
• the gold highlights of the Child’s garments signify the light of the Kingdom, the divine glory of Him who nevertheless lets Himself be carried like a little child;
• the gold ground, finally, abolishes all scenery: there is neither landscape nor hour of day, but uncreated light outside time.

“Honour paid to the image ascends to its prototype, and he who venerates the image venerates the person represented in it.” — Second Council of Nicaea, definition of 787^[17]

This principle — honour passes to the prototype — is borrowed from St Basil the Great, who had formulated it concerning the Son, “image of the Father”.^[18]

The reverse: the Hetoimasia and the instruments of the Passion

It is often forgotten: Our Lady of Vladimir is painted on both sides. On the reverse appears a Hetoimasia — the “prepared throne”, symbol of Christ the Judge who is to return — surrounded by the instruments of the Passion: the cross, the lance, the sponge. This face, added much later (around the 14th–15th century, and sometimes linked to the circle of Andrei Rublev), confirms that the icon was a processional image, made to be carried and seen from both sides.^[19][20]

The juxtaposition is no accident: the tenderness of the recto and the instruments of torment on the verso say the same thing in two languages. The child Mary presses to her cheek is the one whose throne, on the reverse, awaits His glorious return after the Cross.

The dating: around 1130, the age of the Komnenoi

For a long time, the icon’s origin was masked by layers of overpaint and by the goldsmith’s revetment covering it. Stylistic analysis of the original faces, revealed in the 20th century, allowed art historians to date it to the first third of the 12th century, around 1130, and to attach it without hesitation to a great workshop of Constantinople, under the reign of Emperor John II Komnenos (1118–1143).^[21][22][23]

This is the so-called Komnenian age (named after the Komnenos dynasty, 1081–1185), one of the summits of Byzantine art: the hieratic majesty of earlier centuries is interiorised, faces become more human, spirituality more tender and more moved.^[24] Our Lady of Vladimir is held to be the most important surviving work of this entire period.^[25]

The hand of a great imperial workshop

The quality of execution is such that it can only come from a workshop of the very first rank. The Virgin’s face is painted with extreme delicacy: passages of shadow and light are so finely blended that no brushstroke can be discerned. The painting proceeds, in the classical Byzantine manner, from darkness toward light — a brown-green ground (proplasmos) built up in successive layers to the lightest highlights (see Byzantine Icons for the details of the technique).^[26][27]

Prestigious stylistic kinships

Specialists compare the faces of Our Lady of Vladimir with the highest Byzantine achievements: the Kahn Madonna of the National Gallery in Washington (13th century) and the Deesis mosaic of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (c. 1261) belong to the same family of masterpieces. This kinship confirms a Constantinopolitan and imperial origin, not a provincial one.^[28]

A venerable tradition

Like many great Marian icons, Our Lady of Vladimir is traditionally attributed to St Luke the Evangelist, who is said to have painted it “from life”, in the Virgin’s own lifetime — a tradition recorded in writing, for this icon, in 1512. The same tradition holds that St Luke, physician and companion of St Paul, painted the first images of the Mother of God.^[29][30]

This tradition must not be swept aside with a reflex gesture: it expresses a conviction of faith, namely that Mary’s image does not proceed from an artist’s fancy, but goes back to the very origins of the Church and hands on features received, not invented. For the Byzantine believer, to say “painted by St Luke” is to say: this image is faithful; it comes from the source.

What art history says

Material and stylistic examination, as we have seen, places the surviving panel in the 12th century, not the 1st. There is no insoluble contradiction here: tradition attributes to St Luke the type of the image — the first model from which iconographers claim descent — far more than any particular wooden board. The Vladimir icon is one of the most perfect witnesses of a lineage which piety traces back to the Evangelist, though no Catholic is bound to affirm that this very panel literally came from his hands.

Holding faith and history together

The healthy reflex is neither raw credulity (“the wood dates from the 1st century”) nor disdainful scepticism (“a mere legend of no interest”). The Lucan attribution is a datum of Tradition speaking of the continuity of Marian faith; the 12th-century dating is a datum of art history illuminating the surviving work. The two complement each other: a very ancient, venerable image, faithful to a received model, and at the same time an identifiable masterpiece of a century and a workshop.

“I do not venerate matter, I venerate the God of matter, who became matter for my sake […] and who, through matter, wrought my salvation.” — St John Damascene, Discourses on the Images, I, 16^[31]

From Constantinople to Kyiv

The icon left the City very early. Around 1131, it was sent from Constantinople to Kyiv, as a gift to the court of the princes of Rus’ — a diplomatic present of priceless worth, expressing the alliance with Byzantium and its radiance over the young Slavic world, Christianised since the Baptism of Kievan Rus’ (988). It was first placed in the convent of Vyshgorod, near Kyiv.^[32][33]

The transfer to Vladimir (1155)

In 1155, Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky (“Andrew the God-lover”) carried the icon north to his principality of Vladimir-Suzdal. Tradition tells that the horses bearing it stopped dead near Vladimir and refused to go on: the prince saw in this a sign of the Mother of God’s will to remain in that place. The icon was installed in the magnificent Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir, consecrated around 1160 — it is from this city that it now takes its name.^[34][35]

The entry into Moscow (1395)

The last great displacement brought it to Moscow in 1395, as the armies of Tamerlane (Timur) threatened Russia. The icon was carried from Vladimir to Moscow to implore the Mother of God’s protection; it would never leave the new capital, where it is venerated in the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Kremlin. Moscow thus became the spiritual heir of Kyiv and Vladimir, and the Vladimirskaya the visible sign of this translation of the centre of Christian Russia.^[36][37]

Our Lady of Vladimir did not remain a museum piece: for centuries it was Russia’s palladium — the protective image borne in procession in hours when all seemed lost. Tradition credits it with three great deliverances, each of which gave rise to a liturgical feast still celebrated today.^[38][39]

1395: Tamerlane withdraws

In 1395, the conqueror Tamerlane ravaged southern Russia and marched on Moscow. Grand Prince Vasily I had the icon carried from Vladimir to Moscow; the people prayed along its path. According to tradition, on the very day the icon entered the city, Tamerlane inexplicably abandoned his advance and retreated. Russian piety saw in this withdrawal an intervention of the Mother of God.^[40][41]

1480: the Stand on the Ugra

In 1480, during the famous episode of the Stand on the Ugra River, the armies of Grand Prince Ivan III and those of Khan Akhmat faced each other without joining decisive battle; the khan finally withdrew, putting an end to Mongol domination over Russia. The deliverance was again attributed to the protection of the Vladimirskaya.^[42]

1521: Mehmed Giray spares Moscow

In 1521, Mehmed Giray, Khan of Crimea, threatened Moscow before withdrawing without taking the city. This third deliverance too was credited to the icon.^[43]

To these three events correspond three feasts of Our Lady of Vladimir, still inscribed in the liturgical calendar:

These accounts belong to pious tradition more than to historical demonstration; but they speak a constant spiritual truth of Christian prayer: turning to the Mother of God in peril, and giving her thanks for the salvation received.

An image several times saved from fire

Few works have suffered and survived so much. Our Lady of Vladimir has endured fires, sacked cities and centuries of wear. The panel was damaged then restored at least five times: after the Mongol sack of 1237, around the turn of the 15th century, under Vasily III in 1514, again in 1566, then in the 18th–19th centuries. With each restoration, garments and grounds were largely repainted — to the point that, for a long time, the original Byzantine work could no longer be seen.^[44][45]

The oklad: the goldsmith’s raiment

Like many greatly venerated icons, Our Lady of Vladimir was long covered with an oklad (or riza), a revetment of precious metal leaving visible only the faces and hands. Two major revetments have been preserved: one from the early 15th century, the other — a robe of gold with a halo — offered by Patriarch Nikon in 1657. They are today in the Kremlin Armoury. The oklad protected the icon, but it also hid almost all the painting from view.^[46]

1918–1919: the rediscovery of the Byzantine face

The decisive turning point came in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. In December 1918, a commission of restorers and art historians — centred on Igor Grabar, Alexander Anisimov and the restorer Grigory Chirikov — undertook the cleaning of the icon. Beneath layers of overpaint and blackened varnish, they uncovered the original faces of 1130, miraculously preserved: the old varnish covering them had kept the overpaint from adhering directly to the Byzantine painting. This restoration gave the world back the true face of Our Lady of Vladimir and made it possible to establish its date and origin.^[47][48]

Countless copies

The original was copied tirelessly for centuries, so much so that “Our Lady of Vladimir” today denotes both the unique icon from Constantinople and a whole type of Marian icons of tenderness, reproduced in the workshops of Novgorod, Pskov and Moscow. Several of these copies have themselves become venerated works, with their own history and their own cult.^[49][50]

Rublev and the Moscow school

Our Lady of Vladimir profoundly marked the great Russian masters. Tradition links the icon to the circle of Andrei Rublev — the greatest of Russian iconographers, author of the famous Trinity — who is said to have taken part in one of its restorations and perhaps in the decoration of the reverse (see Byzantine Icons and Christ Pantocrator). Through it, the genius of Constantinople passed into Russian art, which it raised to its own summit.^[51][52]

An image fully recognised by the Church

Though born in the Byzantine East and long the palladium of Orthodox Russia, Our Lady of Vladimir belongs to the common treasure of the undivided Church of the first millennium. The Catholic Church unreservedly recognises the legitimacy of the veneration of icons, defined at the Second Council of Nicaea and founded on the mystery of the Incarnation: God having made Himself visible by becoming man, He can henceforth be represented, and with Him His Mother. Many Catholics today pray before copies of the Vladimirskaya, and its image stands in many Latin sanctuaries.^[53][54]

A school of Marian prayer

By its very composition — the Child pressing Himself against His Mother, the Mother looking at us — Our Lady of Vladimir is a true catechesis in images of Catholic Marian devotion: going to Jesus through Mary, entrusting oneself to her who bears Him, receiving from her the gaze that leads us back to her Son. It continues in paint what the liturgy sings of the Theotokos.

“More honourable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim, thou who without corruption gavest birth to God the Word, true Mother of God, we magnify thee.” — Byzantine Marian hymn (Axion estin)^[55]

Before this icon, Catholic prayer recognises its own: that of a people who know themselves protected by a Mother, and who, through the tenderness of her face, are led to the mystery of the One she holds in her arms.

• Byzantine Icons — the history, technique and great types of the art of the icon, to which Our Lady of Vladimir belongs.
• The Theology of the Icon — the spiritual and doctrinal foundation: what the image “is” and why it is venerated.
• Christ Pantocrator — the great iconographic type of Christ in majesty, another summit of Byzantine art.
• The Council of Nicaea II (787) — the dogmatic definition of the veneration of holy images.
• The Iconoclast Controversy — the iconoclast crisis (726–843) which shaped the art of the icon.
• Mary, Mother of God — the title of Theotokos which governs all Marian iconography.