AN ICON «SAINT THEODORE, PRINCE OF YAROSLAV, AND HIS SONS SAINTS DAVID AND CONSTANTINE » Vladimir villages (?), late 19th c.

wood, gesso, gold leaf, tempera 22.5 x 17.8 cm Conservation: without restoration, worn gilding This image is a kind of triple portrait of the governor-father with his two sons-heirs to the throne. Blessed Prince Feodor reigned in Yaroslavl at the end of the thirteenth century. Before his death he took the monastic schema and was buried in the Spaso-Preobrazhensky monastery in Yaroslavl, where later in the same crypt were laid the bodies of his sons. In 1463 during the transfer of the princes to a new tomb their undecayed relics were uncovered, which at the same time became famous for miracles of healing. Their first icons appeared after the all-Russian canonization in the middle of the 16th century.