A mystical betrothal

St. Catherine the Great Martyr was widely venerated throughout the Christian world. She is considered the patroness of sciences and students, theologians, and philosophers. In Europe, young girls asked the saint for the gift of a bridegroom. In Russia, St. Catherine of Alexandria was prayed to as an intercessor at the exodus of the soul and as a helper in difficult childbirth.

The legend of Christ giving the Great Martyr Catherine a ring as a symbol of spiritual union with Christ and the Church appeared in Russia in the late 17th century under the influence of Western European and Greek texts and models, and the first images appeared at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries. In the nineteenth century there was an idea that prayers before the image of the Betrothal of the Great Martyr Catherine contribute to the strengthening of marriage and marital happiness.

The exhibition "Mystical Betrothal" is dedicated to this rare subject in Russian iconography. It presents several rare icons from the collection of the Andrei Rublev Museum and private collections, as well as an iconographic example from the State Historical Museum. Unique is the history of the icon of the Betrothal of the Great Martyr Catherine of the Moscow Grenadier Regiment, on which memorial inscriptions about its creation and decoration by several generations of officers of this regiment from 1797 to 1851 have been preserved.

The curator of the exhibition is N.V. Gerasimenko, Head of the Scientific and Fund Department, Candidate of Art History.