At the end of 2022, the Andrei Rublev Museum acquired the icon of the Presentation of the Lord created in the first quarter of the 18th century. Its composition differs significantly from Byzantine and Old Russian versions and dates back to the iconographic tradition of Western Europe. The icon is exhibited together with an engraving of the same subject, which is part of the illustrations of the New Testament part of the Piscator's Bible of 1650 from the collection of the State Historical Museum. The engraving "The Presentation of the Christ Child in the Temple" included in the edition was made after a drawing by the outstanding Flemish artist of the second half of the 16th century, Martin de Vos. It was the basis for the composition of the museum icon - having copied the engraving in detail, the iconographer made a slight modification of the Western model.
Despite the great popularity of the Piscator's Bible, which became the "desktop book" of Russian iconographers in the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries, the engraving "The Presentation of the Christ Child in the Temple" after a drawing by Martin de Vos was rarely copied in Russia. The icon of the Presentation of the Lord from the Museum's collection is one of the earliest and most complete reproductions of the icon in Russian iconography of the Synodal period. The image, created during the reign of Peter the Great, will be presented to the public for the first time, as well as a copy of the Piscator's Bible kept in the State Historical Museum.
The curator of the exhibition is Y.V. Ustinova, head of the easel and monumental painting section of the Andrei Rublev Museum's research and collection department.