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Pokrov of St. Sergius of Radonezh (1671)
This pokrov (veil) is a masterpiece from the workshops of Anna Ivanovna Stroganova. Designed to cover the reliquary of St. Sergius of Radonezh, it is remarkable for its luxury materials, the perfection of its embroidery, and the abundance of pearls and precious stones which reflect the wealth of the powerful Stroganov family. The central part shows St. Sergius in his monastic habit: cowl, cloak, and scapular. The halo is decorated with five large, round, enameled gold appliqués embellished with a hundred and eighty-four precious stones. The border is divided into twenty pearl-fringed sections with bands of inscriptions: the section above the saint shows the Trinity, while the others illustrate episodes from the life of St. Sergius. The backgrounds are fully embroidered with silver threads—except those of the inscriptions which, like the images, are worked in gold thread on both sides.
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Fresco: two holy martyrs
The excavations that began in 1954 in the medieval city of Pskov unearthed the vestiges of several churches that had been destroyed under Peter the Great to make way for fortifications. This fresco comes from the ruins of a church unearthed between 1974 and 1978 in the citadel of Dovmont, built by the Lithuanian prince who ensured the security of Pskov from 1266.
The dynamic treatment of the clothing, painted with broad brushstrokes, draws from the Byzantine art of the Palaiologan Renaissance in the early 14th century. The rendering of the faces, however, is distinguished by flat flesh tints, embellished with expressively arranged fine, dense strokes, in the tradition of Pskov and Novgorod. The attachment to the Byzantine movement of the early century explains the dating of the fresco to around 1350.
