Unique in size, method of creation and history, the icons are presented at the exhibition 'Old Believers' Icon. An Image from Antiquity'
On August 8, the exhibition 'Old Believers' Icon. An Image from Antiquity' opened in the main building of the Kirov Regional Museum of Local Lore named after P.V. Alabin. (6+). The exhibition project is timed to coincide with the start of the Old Believers' Velikoretsky Cross Procession, which traditionally takes place from August 9 to 14.
Nadezhda Oskolkova, Deputy Director of the Museum of Local Lore, recalled that in 2023 the regional museum hosted the exhibition 'Old Believers: Culture and Traditions.'
– The exhibition attracted great interest from visitors, and we received many questions about Old Believer culture. This time we decided to introduce visitors to the world of the Old Believer icon. All the iconographic works presented in the exhibition possess great cultural, artistic and historical value.
The exhibition features about 50 icons: both painted and three-dimensional (metalwork) from the late 19th – early 20th centuries, created in the Vyatka, Samara, Vladimir and Simbirsk governorates. Among them are true rarities.
For example, a copper-cast icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker impresses with its size (23 x 26.5 cm) and, most of all, with its weight—over 4 kg! The fact is that similar Old Believer icons usually have a much smaller format (up to 10 cm in height) and their weight is measured in grams.
Another rare icon made in Old Believer tradition is of interest. It is a copper-cast crucifix set into a painted wooden icon. In the 'Crucifixion of Christ' exhibited at the show, the wooden base frames the sacred relic—the cross.
The exhibition also displays icons from the families of well-known Vyatka Old Believers—the peasant Maksimov family and the merchant Zonov family—an icon 'The All-Seeing Eye of God', which is called one of the most mysterious images with a complex symbolic iconographic composition, as well as an icon of St. Christopher executed in a rather unusual manner.
The opening was attended by a representative of the Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church, Bishop Euthymius of Kazan and Vyatka. He noted the great role of the Old Believer Church in preserving the foundations of Orthodoxy and the spiritual and moral values of the Russian people.
– At this exhibition you should not simply look at the icons. You should let it pass through your heart, soul and mind. Stop and reflect. And if we live by the commandments left to us by our ancestors, we will have a strong people, a strong country, strong faith, – emphasized Bishop Euthymius.
