In October 2024 it will be 330 years since the founding of the Vygovskaya Desert, the largest center of the Old Believers-Bespopovites in the North of Russia. During the period of developed book printing of the 18th-19th centuries, the art of handwritten book design reached an unprecedented height there, and the established Pomor ornament still amazes viewers with its subtlety and skill. The exhibition will feature the October volume of the famous Vygovskiye Minei Chetiye from the museum's collection. The unique list from the early 1830s testifies to the more than a century-long tradition of rewriting a huge hagiographic corpus, which included appropriate readings for each day of the church calendar, including rare hagiographical texts of saintly ascetics of the Russian North. The tradition was interrupted in 1838, when a government ban on the copying and distribution of books in Vyga was issued.
A visual addition to the manuscript is the Old Believer double-sided tablet icon "Mineya. October" of the first half of the 19th century and several copper-cast Vygoretsk folding icons of the 18th century decorated with enamels. The images of saints executed in the traditions of Old Russian art emphasize the cultural and spiritual continuity of Old Believers and Old Russian artistic traditions.
The curator of the exhibition is L.I. Alekhina, candidate of philological sciences, leading researcher of the research department of the Andrei Rublev Museum.