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 End
of 14th century. Moscow From the Dormition cathedral in Kolomna.
The icon is first mentioned in chronicles of the second half of
the 16th century. Its worship is connected with the campaigns of Ivan
the Terrible against the Tartar states which had emerged on the ruins
of the Golden Horde, and reminiscences of the victory over Tartars in
the Battle of Kulikovo, on the river Don, in 1380. It was in the reign
of Ivan the Terrible that the Moscow Prince Dimitrii Ivanovich, who commanded
the battle, received his honourable surname of Donskoi, shared by the
Dormition Church in Kolomna, founded by him before the battle, and the
ancient icon of Our Lady in this church. Tsar Ivan took the icon in his
Kazan military expedition of 1552 and, after the victory, placed it in
the Annunciation Cathedral of the Kremlin. In 1591, Tsar Fedor loannovich's
prayer before it preceded the miraculous deliverance of Moscow from the
besieging troops of Khan Kazi Ghirei. This miracle was commemorated by
the foundation of the Donskoi Monastery, which received an exact replica
of the miraculous image. Many sermons and legends were composed about
this image, which combined true historical facts borrowed from the 16th
century chronicles with the 17th century tales of its presence on the
Kulikovo battlefield (the icon was said to be presented to Prince Dimitrii
by the Don cossacks during the battle).  Early
copies testify to the emergence of the worship in the 15th century. Its
annual commemoration on August 19, with a procession to the Donskoi Monastery,
was established in the mid-17th century. Our Lady of the Don represents
the iconography of Tenderness — a variant close to Our Lady of Vladimir,
from which it differs by the Child's bare legs, bent at the knee and resting
on the Virgin's hand.
As the processional image, placed behind the altar table of the Dormition
Cathedral of Kolomna, the icon had a reverse image of the Dormition. There
are two hollows for the relics, closed in with wax, on the bottom margin
of the face side. The icon was painted for the Dormition Cathedral of
Kolomna in the 1380s or 90s. The majority of experts trace it to the works
of the painter of the Deesis Row of the Kremlin Annunciation Cathedral,
identified as Theophanes the Greek. |
