Thе article addresses one of the important and multifaceted problems of visual art: the artist’s use of patterns. This issue is especially relevant to traditional cultures, including Russian ecclesiastical art. The iconographic canon, whose dogmatic necessity was formulated by the Church Fathers, served for many centuries as the foundation of artistic practice in church art. The article examines the ways in which iconographic “information” was transmitted in the Middle Ages. A particularly important role in this process was played by icon patterns and icon painters’ pattern books. The expansion of the range of iconographic sources from the second half of the seventeenth century became one of the factors that contributed to the renewal of the subject repertoire and to the emergence of stylistic innovations in Russian ecclesiastical art.

This article examines several copies of miracle-working icons preserved in the collection of the Historical Museum. To reproduce the original accurately in its “measure and likeness ,” icon-painting patterns were employed; as a rule, these bore corresponding inscriptions. The process of taking a tracing from a venerated icon was accompanied by a special ritual, and copies produced by those participating in the event were held in particularly high esteem. In exceptional cases, such patterns were made directly by imperial decree. Many replicas record the condition of revered images at a particular moment in their history, when the originals were frequently obscured by layers of overpainting and darkened varnish. They therefore provide valuable evidence for dating these monuments in relation to the history of their restoration. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the practice of copying venerated icons with their precious revetments became widespread, with the revetments themselves reproduced pictorially. Such copies were produced both as presentation icons and as images intended for distribution, on the basis of patterns obtained by icon painters. Some materials used for copying outstanding works were acquired during their restoration. Within the museum collection, a group of drawings by N. I. Podklyuchnikov has been identified; these were executed during the large-scale restoration of icons in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin.

The article examines the technological and artistic features of icon patterns, a distinct category of religious graphic material. It analyzes the principal techniques used in their production, namely nalepok, skol (skolok), and priporokh. Each of these methods required considerable skill and precision. Nalepok is a technique for taking an impression from an original onto paper or a prepared wooden panel. Skol (skolok) refers to the transfer of a contour image by means of a needle and a series of closely spaced perforations. Priporokh was employed to transfer an image with the aid of powdered pigment. The discussion is illustrated with examples from the Tracing Collection of the State Historical Museum, which make it possible to demonstrate the distinctive features of each technique through specific historical objects.

This article summarizes the experience of the Graphic Restoration Workshop of the State Historical Museum, taking as its case study the tracings and icon patterns presented at the exhibition Icon and Pattern: Works from the Collection of the State Historical Museum at the Sergey Andriaka School of Watercolor. The authors provide a detailed analysis of this material from the perspective of the specific features and methodology of restoration practice. In addition to addressing practical issues related to the preparation, display, and presentation of this type of graphic art, the article considers prospects for further research and restoration work within the stated field.

This article examines the iconographic sources of several devotional images produced for distribution in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries and depicting the Savior Not Made by Hands (Spas Nerukotvornyi). Their prototypes were among the most important sacred images of Christendom preserved in Rome. Over the course of their long histories, these objects have repeatedly attracted scholarly attention and have become standard subjects of encyclopedic entries and general surveys of art history. The veneration of these Roman prototypes, in a scene associated with the solemn procession held in Rome on 15 August, is represented in the mosaic of ca. 1143 decorating the apse conch of the basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere. The often contradictory traditions surrounding these sacred images have only heightened interest in them. For centuries, Rome’s relic icons were reproduced in numerous painted and engraved copies. Two such copies, together with a photograph of an icon whose present whereabouts are unknown and which was likewise painted after an Italian model, are preserved in the collection of the State Historical Museum. These objects are published here for the first time. Their accompanying inscriptions, translated by the author, shed further light on the cultural and historical contexts of both the works themselves and the sacred images to which they refer.

The article examines the icon “Saint Nicetas the Great Martyr Trampling the Demon” from the collection of the State Historical Museum, distinguished by a rare iconographic type. In museum documentation, the work had previously been associated with the Stroganov icon-painting tradition, although both its painterly characteristics and its state of preservation raised doubts concerning such an attribution. A more thorough investigation has demonstrated that the icon originated from the St. Nicholas Edinoverie Monastery, which received numerous rarities from the collection of the priestless Old Believers of the Preobrazhenskoe Almshouse community. A small group of copies and icon-pattern drawings deriving iconographically from the icon under study has also been identified. Technical and technological analyses have made it possible to establish that the work was executed no later than the first half of the seventeenth century. This dating is further corroborated through comparison between the original icon and a 1902 copy painted by Vasilii Pavlovich Guryanov and now preserved in the State Russian Museum. The icon depicts the heavenly patron of Nikita Grigorievich Stroganov (1560–1616) and was most likely created during his lifetime by one of the leading painters of the Stroganov workshops.